For the benefit of those who are visiting
us today, may I say that a few
weeks ago I began a series on the
Sermon on the Mount, and we are currently
in the Beatitudes, and this morning it is
our task to come and look at this
very remarkable utterance of our Lord in verse
5, where he says, Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Neither ancient nor modern paganism sets a very
high price on meekness.
In our society, as in ancient times, the
important man is the successful man, the man
whom we deem, according to our understanding of
the word success, the man whom we deem
to be successful.
And he is usually anything but meek.
He's the go-getter.
He's the very persuasive, strong character who knows
what he wants and goes out to get
it, and will get it, irrespective of circumstances.
A symbol of him would be something more
like a bulldozer than a lamb.
That's the kind of man that the modern
society appreciates.
And then we come back to this.
And if you believe that Jesus is the
Son of God, God incarnate, then this is
all the more challenging, because he turns everything
upside down, and he says, Blessed are the
meek, and then he adds this, and this
is to make everything really topsy-turvy as
far as we are concerned.
He says that ultimately it's the meek who
will inherit the earth.
A tough man will get something.
The go-getter will arrive somewhere and will
procure something, but he'll not ultimately win.
It is the meek, says the Son of
God, sincerely speaking to his followers on this
occasion, it's the meek who will inherit the
whole earth.
Now that turns our canons right upside down.
First thing we've got to do is what
we've begun to do in chatting with the
children this morning.
It's to discover the nature of meekness itself.
What is it all about?
Now against that background of one or two
things we said to the young ones, let's
look a little more in detail and try
to discover what it is.
What we said to the children was true,
but it doesn't go far enough.
The Old Testament and the New Testament, and
the contemporary thinking around the Old and New
Testaments, they add appreciably to what there said.
The first thing necessary of course is to
bear in mind that our Lord was there
actually quoting from the Old Testament.
He was quoting, or if not completely quoting,
he was evidently referring to something said in
Psalm 37.
That's why we read earlier from that Psalm.
Psalm 37 and the 11th verse says, according
to the Revised Standard Version, which is very
accurate here, the meek shall possess the land.
The meek shall possess the land.
And the Hebrew word there translated meek is
variously rendered as meek, or humble, or lowly,
or in one of a number of such
words.
Thus the psalmist is describing a man whose
most noteworthy characteristic is his yielded submissiveness to
the will of God and to the workings
of his providence.
Far from grumbling with his lot, however dark
and dreary it may be, he sweetly and
believingly submits in the assurance that God is
good in his nature, that God is all
wise in his counsels, and almighty in his
works.
And on that score he gladly, willingly submits
to God and awaits the outcome as God
will determine it.
He will do everything that God asks him
to do in his given situation, but his
eyes are upon God.
He waits upon God.
If you want a summary of his attitude,
I suppose you have it in those lines
of one of our hymns, My times are
in thy hands.
My Lord, I wish them there.
Nowhere else but there.
Or, if you like, there are Horatius Bonar's
words, Thy way not mine, O Lord, however
dark it be, lead me by thine own
hand, choose out the path for me.
Take thou my cup, and it with joy
or sorrow fill.
As best to thee may seem, choose thou
my good and ill.
That's the attitude.
Being thus yielded to the will and the
ways of God, the meek person is heir
to blessings that the rebellious simply cannot receive.
That really is the thrust of Psalm 37.
The psalmist loved to dwell, the psalmist as
a whole, there are many psalmists as you
know, they all seem to like to dwell
upon this theme of meekness, but it only
comes to its own really in terms of
teaching in the New Testament.
In the New Testament we find that the
Greek word for meekness was used, for example,
of a soothing medicine that brings down your
temperature and gets rid of the fever.
It comes exactly from the same root.
You've got the picture, here you are, all
hot and bothered, and your temperature's going up,
and with your temperature perhaps other things are
mounting too, and you tend to get all
excited and all hot and bothered, and somebody
offers you a dose of medication, and in
no time down comes the temperature, and the
fever vanishes, and you seem to come back
to yourself again.
The word for meekness is related to that
word.
It was also used in relation to somebody
out, and it's very closely related to the
last illustration, somebody out, shall we say, on
a boat, or walking on a very hot
and sultry day, and you come to a
point in your pilgrimage when you say, I'm
just giving up, I'm sweating beads, or streams,
or what have you, and there's hardly a
breeze, and here I am, I'm just about
to pack in, and somehow, somewhere, there comes
a beautiful little breeze.
You've ever been out like that?
Of course you have.
Oh, boy, don't you take it in.
You almost open your mouth as well as
your eyes and everything else.
It's so welcome, and if you have two
or three breezes like that, it makes such
a difference, and you think, oh yeah, I
can go on again.
Do you know, this same word, the same
base, the same root, was also used in
New Testament times of the breaking in of
animals, particularly of horses.
Now, perhaps some of you are strange to
farm life, agricultural life.
Well, not many of you, I'm sure, and
you know, you can't ride a horse until
it's broken in.
That's part of the miracle of our Lord
riding on the foal of an ass into
Jerusalem, a foal that had never been broken
in, but he was master of it, and
it yielded to him, but it had never
been broken in.
But you try it.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not
suggesting you try it.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that
at all.
Don't you try it, because if you do,
you'll either get a kick as you draw
near, or if you happen to get on
the, on the horse's back, you'll soon find
a way off again.
It's just one of those things you can't
do.
The horse has got to be trained.
He's got to be taught.
He's got to be made meek.
The philosopher Aristotle regarded meekness as the mean
between two extremes, the extremes of violent anger
on the one hand, and of cold, careless,
angerlessness on the other.
Those of you who've studied Aristotle will know
of his great doctrine of the mean, and
he used to say that this is the
secret of living, of finding the mean, of
not going to extremes, finding that which mediates
between, between two positions.
Well, he brought it out in this.
He said that it was wrong to be
angry at the least provocation, and equally wrong,
equally wrong to be so lacking in convictions
about anything that you're never angry.
And so he goes on to say that
the meek man was one whose anger was
always at the right time, for or against
the right principle, of the right proportion, and
for the proper duration.
Now he was a pagan.
He wasn't a Christian.
But I tell you, he goes very far.
He has light from heaven there.
Such anger of the meek was never on
account of supposed injury or insult done to
oneself, of course.
It's not selfishness, but it is entirely, says
Aristotle, as does the New Testament, on account
of the fact that something's happening to someone
else.
Anger is not only permissible in the New
Testament, it is required.
Be angry, says the Apostle, it's a command,
but don't sin.
In other words, if you see things which
are radically wrong taking place, and you couldn't
care less, and you can't open your mouth
and you don't say anything against it, it
means that you're in a morally neutral position.
You're a compromiser.
Such anger is, of course, difficult.
This kind of anger, the anger of the
meek, is very difficult to produce, and difficult
to control.
We thus find in the Old Testament, and
in Greek thought, complex ideas on this subject
of meekness.
When we examine the New Testament itself, the
Christian conception of this virtue, we find that
the idea is already expressed out there, but
there is something new.
There is something new.
In the New Testament, meekness is, for example,
a quality of life that is evidenced in
both attitude as well as action.
Not only in the way you do things,
but the way you think, the way you
feel.
It goes deeper than your words, deeper than
what is seen, deeper than what is heard.
It is an attitude of soul in the
first place, and it will ultimately appear both
Godward and manward.
In relation to God, meekness is an attitude
that bows beneath His sovereign will.
Now that's been evidenced in some of the
things we've said already.
Meekness before God is the refusal to find
fault or to fight back.
Meekness before God bows beneath His sovereign will
and gladly submits though you don't know what
He's doing.
It means enduring what is painful in His
providence, in the belief that He's all wise
and all good.
That's meekness.
Obeying His commands out of a willing heart
because you believe that He, God, would not
have given us such commands were they not
for our good and the good of others
as well as His own glory.
It's meat, that is the meat of the
meek man, is to do the will of
Him who sent Him and to finish His
work.
Manward, meekness expresses itself in a gentle graciousness
whereby the power to retaliate in kind against
someone, someone who inflicts injury against us, is
held in check.
This is what I wanted to get across
to the kids.
Meekness bears and meekness forebears.
And it does more, of course.
It doesn't just put up with things.
It refuses to overcome evil with kind, evil
with evil.
It determines, as Paul tells us in Romans,
to overcome evil with good.
That's meekness.
That's the meekness of Abraham.
That's the meekness of Joseph.
That's the meekness of David.
That's the meekness of Daniel.
That's the meekness of Jesus.
That's the meekness of Paul.
That's the real biblical meekness.
Now, lest it should be thought that meekness
is essentially weakness therefore, let it be remembered
that this virtue is never inconsistent with anger,
let me stress that.
The Old Testament affords a striking illustration of
the meekest man being probably one of the
angriest at one stage, namely Moses.
In Numbers chapter 12 and verse 3 we
are told that Moses was the meekest man
of his generation.
Was Moses weak?
You read the story.
Would you like to lead a people like
this who have been for 400 years as
slaves and have been made a rabble by
the circumstances in which they lived?
I tell you Moses could not afford to
be weak if ever there was a strong
man, it was Moses.
Really strong to harness all the energies and
all the efforts of all these people together
and to get them to follow him in
the way of the Lord when they were...
they didn't want to at the end.
And he was particularly angry with them on
certain occasions as for example when they made
the golden calf.
There was a wrong anger at the beginning,
we shall refer to that again.
But later on there was an anger which
was...
which was consistent with his meekness.
He comes down from the mountain where he's
been receiving the Ten Commandments and other laws
from God and he finds that this great
people that he himself by the hand of
God has delivered from Egypt, here they've made
idols for themselves, a golden calf.
And they're all full of revelry and dancing
and immoralities.
And he threw the tables down in anger.
Why?
Because he was a really meek man.
Though that sounds strange.
Anger is sometimes necessary my friends and I
would say to you that part of the
problem of many of our evangelical churches this
morning is we don't know when to be
angry.
And we're not willing to face the reaction
in the world and in the church when
we are righteously indignant with unholy and unbiblical
things.
Jesus was angry on some occasions.
And it was not inconsistent with meekness.
Our Lord was angry on a number of
occasions.
Let me just say...
refer to one or two of them lest
you've forgotten.
I remember for example that occasion when the
disciples forbade mothers.
Now this seems strange to many good people.
You remember the mothers bringing their children to
the Lord Jesus.
And we read that our Lord Jesus was
positively angry.
Positively angry.
He said don't stop them let them come.
Theirs is the kingdom of God or the
kingdom of heaven.
And when he got the disciples out of
the way he got the kids come to
him and he took them apparently.
I think the significance of the Greek is
that one by one he took them in
his arms, poured his hands upon them and
blessed them.
As if to say you've done exactly the
wrong thing and he was angry with them.
That's Matthew 11 29 or Matthew 10 13
to 14 I should say.
He was angry against his foes when they
blindly condemned his acts of mercy on the
Sabbath.
They were not willing that he should heal
the paralytic man in the synagogue.
It was God's will that the man should
be healed.
It was Jesus own desire as the incarnate
Lord that the man should be healed.
But some of the Jewish people were frenzied
to bitterness.
And they wouldn't allow it.
Well they had to allow it.
But they were angry.
And there are other illustrations.
On one occasion with Simon Peter himself.
After the confession in Caesarea Philippi he turned
to Peter and he says get thee behind
me Satan.
That's anger.
And the context tells us so.
Get behind me Satan.
You don't savor the things that are of
God now but the things that be of
man.
And of course the supreme example of all
is that when our Lord goes single handed
into the temple.
He did so at the beginning of his
ministry and he did so at the end
of his ministry.
To cleanse the temple of its moral impurities.
Men had made it a place of business.
A place for profit.
And some of the great ecclesiastics of the
day they were only involved in the business
it would appear because of the profit motive.
And Jesus overturned the tables of the money
changers.
And he opened the cages where the pigeons
were and let them free.
And he says you have made my father's
house a den of thieves.
It was meant to be a house of
prayer for all nations.
You've made it anything but.
And he did it alone.
There is an anger which is consistent with
meekness and it is necessary.
You can only sin if you do not
show anger.
Jesus was no weakling.
His silence before Herod and his non-resistance
in the garden of Gethsemane may suggest that
his meekness was weakness.
It was not.
I suggest to you that Jesus was never
more full of courage and real manliness than
when having consulted with the father.
He said if it is possible let this
cup pass from me.
Nevertheless knowing what was ahead of him he
says nevertheless not my will but yours be
done.
And when there was no answer or an
answer that indicated that the cup might pass
from it from him on he goes as
manliness.
This then is a virile robust phenomenon.
The fact that the meek man does not
press for his rights but is often lacking
in self-assertiveness is not to be interpreted
as indicating that he's a spineless creature.
Let him who thinks that it is so
try for even one day to live a
life which manifests biblical weakness.
Meekness involves basically real control of yourself.
I was in a seminar two weeks ago
where a psychiatrist said to the congregation gathered
there present it's not people that make you
angry you are angry at people.
Have we ever taken that to heart?
We are responsible for letting ourselves out of
control whether it's the tongue, whether it's the
eye, whether it's the ear, whether it's the
hand or whatever else.
And God in his Word the Savior God
comes into the world and he says I
expect my people to be under control.
Meekness is an outgrowth of that.
Now it's prospects.
Blessed are the meek said Jesus for they
will inherit the earth.
Now I can hear someone here this morning
I'm sure there is one skeptic somewhere there
may be more than one.
But who's saying now now you're gonna find
difficulty with that chump.
You're not gonna inherit much with weakness, with
meekness are you?
You might as well call it weakness because
no man's going to get very far with
meekness.
Well not with men but with God.
That's what Psalm 37 is saying you see.
That the Israelites are not going to possess
the land by dint of their own military
strategy and greater power by waiting upon the
Lord.
That's how they got into the land.
That's how the Red Sea let them out
of Egypt.
That's how the Jordan let them in.
That's how the people were overcome.
Why?
Because of a measure of meekness.
Resting trusting in the Lord.
Let's not consider the marvel of its prospects.
Let's now do that and not let anything
eclipse that for a moment.
Let's just concentrate on it.
Believing this to be the case this beatitude
of our Lord is in danger of being
relegated and it is being relegated in the
teaching of the church and thrown to the
waste paper basket because people don't believe that
it's true any longer.
All current psychology is against this and current
theology likewise following suit.
Let me therefore be at pains to assure
you that it is it is in Scripture
and it is true.
The only man who will inherit the earth
is the meek man.
The man who has learned to receive everything
from God.
Now how?
I want to suggest to you that there
is a present and there is an ultimate
aspect to this promise.
First of all the meek man alone possesses
the earth today.
Secondly the meek man alone will possess the
earth tomorrow.
Today.
There is a present spiritual inheritance which is
possessed only by the meek.
Now though this principle may be illustrated with
reference to Old Testament characters we shall now
turn to pages in the New Testament and
learn of its fulfillment from a number of
those with whom we are familiar and I'm
simply going to give you illustrations here.
The principle will become evident.
Think for example of the banished Apostle John
exiled to the Isle of Patmos.
Now we've been with him recently in our
Sunday evenings and I think this will be
very familiar to our Knox people and it's
just as well.
Here is John banished to the Isle of
Patmos for the testimony of Jesus Christ and
just because he was a believer.
He's not there because he'd be found guilty
of any crime against God or against man
other than that he believed that Jesus was
the Christ and lived accordingly.
That's his crime which is no crime.
Well there he is.
His feet are in chains.
He's severed from his friends.
They're back on the mainland of Asia.
The island of Patmos is between 40, 50,
55 miles maybe out into the sea southwest
of the corner of Asia and there he
is on this rough rugged and largely uninhabited
island.
He's alone, scarcely clad, sparsely fed.
The old man is nearly 95.
Though having to work in the quarries there,
in the marble quarries, the old man remembers
it's the Lord's Day.
What does he do?
Well we have a service.
He starts off in this first chapter and
he tells us of the first service on
Patmos on the Lord's Day.
He's the preacher.
He's the congregation and he's the choir.
He's everything combined and he's gone on record
and he's told us the first hymn.
Unto him that loves us.
Not loved as we saw when we were
examining that.
Examining that.
Unto him that goes on loving us.
John knew the love of God lapping around
the shores of that dark dismal island.
Just as the waves of the sea came
in, so did the waves of divine love
lap themselves around his soul.
Unto him that goes on loving us, he
says, and has loosed us from our sins
in his own blood and has made us
a kingdom, even priests to God and his
father.
John saw himself as belonging to a kingdom.
He was the only member of the kingdom
there upon the island but he remembered the
other subjects and he remembered the king and
he remembered the privileges that the king had
conferred upon him.
That of a priest to go into the
presence of God in worship and in prayer
and praise.
He has made us a kingdom and priests
to God and his father.
To him be glory and dominion forever and
ever.
See that man, that's man inheriting the world.
He's on top of everything.
He's under nothing.
He's master of the situation.
He can look the sea and it's roar.
He can look at his enemies that are
overseeing him as he works in the mines,
in the marble mines.
He can face all the circumstances and he's
above it you see.
Now that's what it is to inherit the
earth.
Now, now, you know anything about that?
Take John's apostolic brother Paul and I'm only
taking one illustration from this.
I really didn't know which one to choose.
Then I came across a rendering by J
.B. Phillips which made me choose this one.
He is quoting from Philippians chapter 4 verses
11 to 13 and Phillips puts it like
this, I have learned to be content whatever
the circumstances may be.
I know now how to live when things
are difficult and I know how to live
when things are prosperous.
In general and in particular I have learned
the secret of facing either plenty or poverty.
I am ready for anything through the strength
of the one who lives within me.
You got it?
See that man's a king of the world.
He's, he's, he's possessing the earth.
He rules.
He's a king.
There is a place my friend in the
mind and heart and purpose of God for
his children to be rulers, to be kings
as well as priests unto God.
How you may ask did this man come
into possession of so triumphant a spirit?
Well the fact of the matter is that
in process of submitting to the divine will
and of obeying to the Lord's commands Paul
discovered resources of grace through the Christ who
strengthens me.
Through the Christ who strengthens me.
Accepting that God chooses my circumstances for me
if I trust him in the circumstances he
has chosen then in those very circumstances he
is able to make all grace abound towards
me that I always having all things may
abound unto every good work.
That's the thought.
So Paul says in the very midst of
that great passage in Romans 8, in the
midst of all these horrible things I've enumerated
he says we are more than conquerors through
him who loves us.
More than conquerors, more than conquerors.
This is triumphant living and brothers and sisters
the world needs to see what this means.
An incident in the life of Towler of
Strasbourg affords a very lovely illustration of the
truth of this third be attitude.
Towler was out for a stroll one day
and he met a beggar, a tramp and
he spoke to the tramp as Towler always
did apparently.
And he said to him God give you
a good day my friend.
The beggar replied I thank God he said
I never have a bad day.
How wonderful some of us would like to
know the secret there.
He was a tramp.
Towler astonished changed the form of his salutation
and now I'm quoting God give you a
happy life my friend said Towler.
I thank God said the beggar I'm never
unhappy.
Never unhappy said Towler what do you mean?
Well rejoined the beggar when it is fine
I thank God.
When it rains I thank my God.
When I have plenty I thank God.
When I am hungry I thank God still.
And since God's will is my will and
whatsoever pleases him pleases me why should I
say I am unhappy when I am not?
But what said Towler what said Towler if
God were to cast you hence into hell
how then?
Now listen.
But as the beggar paused a moment says
the record and then lifting up his eyes
upon him he answered and if he did
I should have two arms to embrace him
with the arm of my faith wherewith I
lean upon his holy humanity and the arm
of my love wherein I am united to
his ineffable deity and thus one with him
he would descend thither with me and there
would I infinitely rather be with him than
anywhere else without him.
But who are you asked Towler?
Taken aback by the sublimity of the reply
said the tramp I am a king.
A king exclaimed Towler where's your kingdom?
In my own heart by the grace of
an almighty God said the tramp.
Brothers and sisters he had it you know.
He was ruling you see.
He was inheriting the earth.
Paul said to the Corinthians they were splitting
up and dividing.
Some of them said I'm of Paul.
I'm of Apollos.
I only read Paul's stuff.
I only read Apollos' stuff.
I only read Peter's stuff.
I only read Jesus' stuff.
And so they divided up.
You know says says says Paul to them
all things are yours.
In another sense we must say the whole
world is ours if we are at the
feet of the Lord of the universe.
My friend have you any such experience in
your life?
The meek will inherit the earth.
Take the cup the Father gives you no
matter what the contents may be.
Submit to the will of an all-glorious
God.
Believe that he is good.
Trust him in every last detail of your
life and thank him for everything and what.
He will give you grace to see that
the circumstances are not on top of you.
You're on top of them.
And so you inherit the earth.
But there is an ultimate inheritance of the
weak.
That's only the half of it.
It's only the fortest.
What we have just referred to precious though
it may be is just but the first
fruit of a harvest yet to be.
The real blessedness of the meek awaits the
day when our blessed Lord Jesus Christ comes
back on the clouds of heaven into a
renewed earth and a heaven come down to
earth.
And there he will reign forever and ever.
Yeah but wait a moment.
And his servants who are joined heirs with
him will reign with him.
And when all the arrogant and the proud
and the wayward and the rebellious have gone
each to their own place.
The meek will inherit the earth, the heavens
and the earth with their glorious Lord Jesus
Christ.
Will you be among them?
Just a word about its production.
It's very important.
It may have been latent in much that
we have said.
But it's very important that we do not
close without saying a word as to how
this is produced.
Let's observe that this is not the first
Beatitude.
And it is no accident that meekness is
not mentioned before the first two but afterwards.
Jesus began blessed are the poor in spirit.
Who are they?
They are those who have come to see
that they have nothing in themselves that deserves
merit with God.
That can make God indebted to them.
They have absolutely nothing that can state a
claim.
A legitimate claim before God.
Because they have sinned.
We have sinned.
The truth of the Bible to put it
in the words of one of the prophets
is this that all our righteousnesses.
Not unrighteousnesses.
I haven't made a mistake.
All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before
God.
What we think is best.
What we think is good and noble and
upright is shot through with false motives and
an evil spirit and whatnot.
And it is unacceptable in the sight of
a holy just God.
We can offer nothing.
So that our hymns specify it quite clearly.
Nothing in my hand I bring.
Simply to thy cross I cling.
Naked I've got nothing to clothe me with
before God.
Naked come to thee for dress.
Foul I to the fountain fly.
I can't wash my sins away.
The man who is poor in spirit is
the man who accepts that divine verdict upon
his own soul and upon his own life.
And you don't learn to develop meekness until
you have first manifested that poverty of spirit.
But it doesn't end there.
The second Beatitude is this.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are they that mourn.
Now this takes the whole movement deeper.
To mourn is to cry because of my
condition.
To mourn is to feel the pinch of
my spiritual bankruptcy.
To mourn is to be humbled by it.
To mourn is to see that without God
in Christ I'm lost.
Have you ever seen yourself there?
My dear men and women, many of you
brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to
tell you this morning.
All the blessings of the kingdom of God
in Christ are beyond you until you see
yourself to be lost and begin to sorrow
for your lostness.
Not because you've been found out that you've
done something wrong, but because you're wrong in
the sight of God and you're lost to
God and you begin to mourn.
You know my friends there's hardly anything which
is more revealing of our true selves than
this.
What do you lose sleep about?
What do you lose your sleep about if
you lose any?
Have you ever lost a moment's sleep because
of the being you are, because of the
character you lack, because you are wrong with
God?
Have you ever shed a tear because God
says you are lost and you know it?
Now listen, it's out of that quality of
spirit that meekness grows.
It doesn't grow anywhere else.
You can plant the seed anywhere, but it
doesn't grow.
But where there is a man or a
woman who knows that he or she is
bankrupt before God and it begins to weep
for sin, then there has gone a brokenness
of the soil of the human heart and
it is in that brokenness of condition that
meekness begins to develop.
The fact of the matter is this my
friends, meekness will only grow when we're broken,
when we're crucified.
And for some strange reason in the evangelicalism
of the 20th century there are so many
people who come into the Christian Church without
being crucified.
And it's in every church.
It's in Baptist Church as well as Presbyterian,
in Anglicans as well as Methodists and United,
everywhere.
Whatever your mode of baptism, even though you
may have been under the water and it's
supposed to be a dying with Jesus Christ,
I know many good Baptists who are still
alive and the old ego and the old
carnal man is still there.
And I've got to have my own way,
just as with us Presbyterians.
There are a hundred thousand people in the
church today who've never never come to birth
by dying.
And they're not meek.
And because they're not meek, our churches are
divided, they're carnal, there's no real fellowship, there's
no binding together of love, there's no concern,
real concern for one another or for the
glory of God.
Meekness you see makes every man get under
the burden of another person.
Meekness makes us cling.
Meekness makes us look at other people before
ourselves.
Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus.
Here it is.
Who was Donald MacLeod said in his prayer
this morning?
Thought it not something to be grasped, even
as equality with God made himself of no
reputation.
Didn't seek his own place first, didn't argue
to be first in the queue, took the
last breath even to die the death of
the cross.
Where does it grow?
It grows in this soil.
The progress of thought and experience in the
Beatitudes is the very progress of experience.
This is the way into the possession of
it.
And therefore I conclude this morning by asking
again.
It's a joy to be with you, joy
to have you in our services this morning
today, our service this morning.
In the name of my God, in the
name of my Lord, I ask you have
you ever been broken?
Are you a broken man or a broken
woman?
Are you like a horse that's never been
broken and no one can ride you?
You'll kick and you'll neigh and you'll scratch
and you'll tear everything down.
You've never been broken.
My friend, you may be in eternity in
seven days.
It's important for you to see the way
of salvation.
Start here.
And I pray you during these closing moments
of our service this morning, acknowledge what God
is telling you about yourself.
If you're not sure of all the ramifications
of it, then start reading the Gospels again.
Get out your New Testament.
Put two or three hours on one side
today.
It will be more important than anything in
your life.
I don't care what visits you propose to
make today.
I don't care who's coming to visit with
you.
It's unimportant.
Your soul salvation is more important than anything.
Read the Word of God.
Face God in the mirror.
Discover who and what you are.
And then see if by the grace of
God, as you and I learn to get
down in humility, we begin to get me.
That'll build the church.
Oh, that'll build the church.
There will be men and women in business
and in society who will say, is something
happening to them there?
I want to know what it's all about
because he's not what he was before.
His arrogance is gone.
His pride is gone.
And with her, it's just the same.
Men or women, it makes no difference.
Something's happening.
Brothers and sisters, this is the way of
salvation.
The cross is at the heart of it.
Not simply historically, but experientially.
And Paul sums up his own experience.
You remember he puts it like this.
I have been crucified with Christ.
That's the key to it.
I live.
I'm alive, he says, and yet it's not
me.
I'm altogether a different man from the man
I was.
I am really alive.
Saul of Tarsus is alive.
I still have the same name, but not
the same nature or the same will.
Christ liveth in me.
Oh, my dear people, let none of us
go away from the Word of God, which
is so clear.
Let none of us evade it today.
Rather, let us come to terms with it,
that we may be truly saved.
And being saved, may be at his disposal
to bring the life of heaven into the
midst of the life of earth, and the
good news of God into the midst of
the miseries brought by man.
Let us pray.
Would you like to make your own response
to the Word of God in a moment's
quietness?
Perhaps it is to yield before him for
the first time as a sinner in need
of a Savior.
Do it now.
Perhaps it is that you've discovered that after
many years, the old nature is as alive
today as it was when you began.
Something has been wrong.
Tell him so.
Ask him for grace to make this a
turning point in your life.
Mark it into your diary.
And say that by his grace, you're accepting
this as the Lord's day, a day of
resurrection.
And by his grace, you mean to discover
what he has for you and what he
has for me.
Oh, God our Father, hear our prayers.
Hear our prayers, and especially our acknowledgements of
sin and wrong and evil, carnality, selfishness, and
egocentricity.
Be merciful to us sinners.
Save those who call on you, and lead
those who out of a conscious need now
ask your help.
Guide them with your eye, that together we
may be a people bearing a testimony to
you and fulfilling your purpose for us in
this day and age.
In Jesus' name, Amen.