All right, hopefully you're already found your way
to Matthew chapter 5.
If you're not there, turn to it.
The Beatitudes are something I suggest to every
Christian.
I think it's wonderful to memorize them and
to study them and to meditate on them.
They're the type of things to me that
they never grow old.
You'll always get new insights in them throughout
your life.
It's not one of those things that two
and two is four, and once you know
it, you've got it.
They're so deep to me.
They're so profound.
They're unsearchable in the sense of the extent
that they can reach into our heart, and
that the happiness that we even discover the
first time through them, it only continues to
grow.
And a deeper joy that goes on all
the way through our life.
And of course, as you recall, that is
what the Beatitudes are all about.
Oh, how happy.
That's what the word blessed means.
This inexpressible, this profound, deep joy, the greatest
joy in all the world.
That's what we're talking about here.
A joy that no one else could ever
even begin to imagine.
I don't care what they've achieved, what they've
got, what they've acquired, what position they have
in the world that's been brought to them,
whether through fame or money or fortune or
talent or any acquisition, any other relationship they've
got.
God has saved the highest and the greatest
joy for those that know him, that look
at him as the greatest of all riches,
the greatest of all discoveries.
And when we are learning that ourselves and
really being, coming to the realization, as our
lives go on and we find ourselves looking
for happiness in other things, in other places,
as deceived as we so easily can be
at times, constantly having the Lord bring us
back again and again, though, to this great
joy.
And for the Beatitudes are really, to me,
you go through them.
They're all, when you put them together, you'll
recall, they equal happiness.
What is really occurring in the Beatitudes, from
one end to the other, is by the
time somebody starts off and says, oh, happy
are the poor in spirit and they who
mourn and they that are meek, and then
those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, and
then the merciful and then the pure in
heart, and then the peacemaker.
As you're watching this, what has actually occurred
as we go through these, you realize there's
been a complete transference of life.
It's a complete transference of power, of the
throne.
We're born sitting on the throne of our
own heart and of our own life, but
as we grow in the Beatitudes, this is
the way that Jesus really becomes Lord of
our life.
And through these wonderful processes revealed to us
by Jesus here in this Sermon on the
Mount.
And here, just to reflect for a moment,
he says, oh, how happy are the poor
in spirit.
The fundamental key there to somebody that is
on the road to true happiness, it starts
off in a sense, first of all, realizing
that they have every reason not to be
happy.
That everything that ought to have made them
happy, that is the spiritual life, the life
with God, the life with his love, with
his life, with his power, with the life
of Christ within us, filling us, leading us,
guiding us, that what has happened, man was
created to know all this, but through sin
we forfeited it all, every bit of it.
The wages of sin is death.
And man there as he found himself utterly
robbed, poverty stricken spiritually, his spiritual life was
gone.
And there we find ourselves with maybe regardless
of what's going on within us physically or
mentally or emotionally, regardless of whatever else we
can accomplish there until their spiritual life were
poor.
And Jesus says, just discovering that, just coming
to the place that you realize that's the
real poverty.
Many of us dream, I'm poor in talent
or I'm poor in ability or I'm poor
in relationships or I'm poor in money or
I'm poor in this.
As long as we think that's where my
poverty is, then we'll seek riches in those
things.
But when I realize, no, the real poverty
I have is in my own spirit.
And then when we realize that, it'll start
heading us into a right and wonderfully new
direction that's going to result in immense happiness.
But then the next step that's going to
happen when somebody is poor in spirit, they're
going to mourn.
We looked at that last time and as
you may recall, the word mourn there, it
means to lament.
It means a person to, it means to
bewail someone, to grieve over them and it's
more commonly used for the dead.
The word that Jesus used there, oh how
happy are they that mourn, is that there's
somebody that is literally mourning over the death.
It also means to mourn over the death
of a friend, to weep and to be
sorrowful.
And Jesus saying there, I'll tell you when
somebody is poor in spirit and they begin
to mourn over it.
They mourn as if someone has died.
At the death of a dear friend, as
a matter of fact, the dearest friend we
have, ourself.
And you know, one of the things that
we live in a day and age, you
know, it's interesting what psychology, I don't mean
to bring that up again, but I guess
you have to unfortunately.
But we live in a day and age
where, you know, psychologists want to tell us,
well, your problem is you don't love yourself
enough and how can you love anybody else
until you love yourself?
Well, that sounds reasonable in a sense, but
you got to realize as far as Jesus
was concerned, loving ourself has never ever been
a problem.
Jesus said the problem is loving somebody else
as you love yourself.
Jesus looks at every human being and says,
believe me, you have no trouble loving yourself.
The nearest, dearest, most precious person in the
whole world is yourself.
I mean, who do you get up every
day?
Yourself.
Who do you go in and spend all
that time looking at in the mirror and
all that money trying to make look nice
to the rest of the world?
Yourself.
Who do we work at so hard to
be so presentable and want everybody to love
so much?
Ourself.
That's what we want.
We are absolutely in love with ourselves.
That's never been a problem for anybody.
And you know, that's why Jesus said if
you could only love others as you love
yourself.
But the great tragedy though that most of
us have is that the person that we
love so much, the person that we're absolutely
in love with, none of the world seems
to have shared that love.
That's our problem.
They look at us and we think we're
so wonderful, but nobody else agrees.
Heaven doesn't agree.
And most of the people, the closer they
get to us, they discover how unlovely we
are.
And that's the great tragedy that we love
somebody so much that it's so unlovely.
But this is what the Sermon on the
Mount is all about.
The person there that's come to that reality,
and they realize that there's something been robbed
from me.
The person I love so much has died.
And we sorrow over it.
We weep over that death.
And when we do, then is when Jesus
said, you're on the road to a great
happiness, a tremendous joy.
You're on the road to a full restoration
of your lost identity that was in sin.
When you don't love yourself and you can't
find that the one that you love so
much is entirely unlovely and is poor in
spirit and you mourn over it, you're on
the road to finding the tremendous happiness, the
great happiness.
But unfortunately, a lot of times we try
to find happiness or we try to find
the solution to our problems.
And even as a Christian, outside of really
being poor in spirit and mourning over it,
I think one of the tragedies somewhat of
the Jesus movement or the revival of the
60s and 70s that really swept much of
the country, affected a lot of places in
the world.
But it was something that it was an
awesome movement.
Those of you that were around and remember
it, you do.
Masses of people were coming to Christ.
The fundamental theology of conversion was pretty clear.
It was pretty commonly preached.
You're a sinner.
You need Christ.
He died on the cross for you.
Open your heart and receive him and you'll
come in.
He'll give you a new life.
And masses of people were responding to it.
There's this tremendous hunger for God that the
spirit of God was giving.
But it's interesting, though the message of being
saved was pretty clearly being preached in many
ways.
And the response was tremendously overwhelming in one
sense.
But at the same time, I noticed as
I look back on it, that there's a
lot of theologies or doctrines as to now
how that new born Christian grows.
How do they mature in Christ?
And here's where there was a lot of
opinions essentially on spiritual growth.
There was a lot of movements.
And those of you around may remember things
in different theologies that promoted different things like
the manifested sons of God.
Perhaps you remember them, children of God and
others, that essentially there was a theology that
taught of what we called the perfection of
the saints at the time.
And in the 60s and 70s when this
was going on with the manifested sons of
God, it was there taken out of Romans
8 when the whole of creation waiteth and
travaileth until now, waiting for the manifested sons
of God, for the children of God to
come into their own.
But they took that theology and said there
that God wants the church perfect.
A full manifestation of his children, because after
all, Jesus is coming soon, but he can't
come for a bride that isn't ready.
And so the theology was is we all
got to get ready.
And we got to get pure, and we've
got to be holy, and we've got to
be perfect.
Because the perfection of the saints, Jesus, after
all, he can't come for a dirty bride.
You know, he's not coming, the holy God
is not coming looking for a dirty woman.
You know, he wants a bride that's clean
and pure.
And that sounded reasonable enough.
Therefore, we got to get our lives together.
We've got to stop sinning.
And we've got to start getting, you know,
as perfect as we can.
And as soon as the church gets perfect,
Jesus can come.
And so a lot of people kind of
bought into that.
Well, unfortunately, though, while this, while they're instructing
everybody on how to get pure, and how
to get clean, and how to get holy,
it was fundamentally required a tremendous amount of
human effort, of human sincerity, of human consecration,
and human things there.
And unfortunately, there was a lot of poor
theology.
And particularly with how do you deal with
sin.
And if you're around, you may recall that,
but it was something that sin was something
there that when you become a Christian, that's
no small issue.
I never thought about being a sinner much
until I became a Christian, then I discovered
I was a sinner after I became a
Christian, essentially.
And then you got a fundamental problem.
You see, I think when I actually became
a Christian, I thought, well, I'm going to
stop sinning now that I'm saved and be
Christian.
And then it was quite an eye-opener
when you realize you stopped, you didn't stop.
You kept right on sinning.
On one hand, there was one thing in
part of my heart.
I knew I loved God.
I knew Christ was alive.
I knew he died for me.
I knew he'd risen.
I knew he was real.
I knew my sins were forgiven.
There was that reality.
God's Holy Spirit had borne witness with my
spirit that I was a child of God.
I was an heir of God.
I knew that.
I knew it not because man convinced me
of it, God convinced me of it.
And yet right next to all this new
life, this new hunger for God, this desire
to walk with Jesus Christ, right next to
it, there's this old nature that had always
been there.
I just never thought about it before.
This sin nature that had always been there,
it's still right there.
And if anything, now it was more real
than ever.
Not less real, it was more real.
There's a lot of things that I always
do and didn't care one way or another
about.
Now I'm a Christian and I'm thinking about
it and I'm getting convicted by it.
I didn't like it.
You know, I used to be able to
go down the road.
Somebody bothered me, you could yell at them.
You could give them all sorts of gestures
and you could cuss at them and feel
all the better for it, you know, and
things.
And now I'm a Christian and now I'm
going down the road doing the same thing,
still yelling and cussing and giving gestures, only
now I feel bad about it.
I'm thinking, it used to be fun.
Now it's not coming off right anymore.
All of a sudden there's somebody in the
car saying, just stop doing that.
How are you supposed to get anywhere if
you don't get there this way?
This is how you get places in the
world.
I don't have a donkey like you.
This is how we do it now.
And, you know, somehow or another.
And now we could be, you know, you
play sports and of course you get all
fired up and you get angry and you
yell at each other and you cuss or
whatever else you do.
That's how you play sports.
It's what it's all about.
You're aggressive and you're nasty and, you know,
and you tell a guy just before he's
about to go out for a pass what
you think of his mother or something or
whatever it is.
And then you become a Christian and then
you try to think up different things to
say about his mother that are a little
nicer, but you mean the same thing.
But now you feel bad about it.
And you wonder what in the world is
going on here.
And, you know, I'd walk around campus before
I was a Christian and see a pretty
girl.
Wow, it's a pretty girl or something like
that.
And you'd walk around campus after you're a
Christian and, wow, they're still pretty, you know,
or something in the, you know, and only
now I feel bad that they're pretty, you
know, or whatever else it is.
And you're trying to struggle.
What do I do with this?
I don't know how to solve this thing.
I solved it a little bit.
I actually transferred out to Cal Poly in
Pomona.
Went to school there.
It's an agricultural school if you don't know
about that.
And it was a little, little less problem
there because the homecoming queen was also state
champion for bull riding and calf roping.
But temptation was a little better when the
homecoming queen, she came in over the hills
at five o'clock at night.
Let's see, which one is she?
But anyway, but no matter what I did,
it just seemed like now I did the
same things.
I said the same internal things, only now
there's a going on.
Now there's a struggle over the whole thing.
Go to a fraternity party.
I used to think they were fun.
Now I go to a party and now
they're no fun.
I tried to make them fun.
I'd work real hard at making them fun.
Get around, start chatting, or then I know
we'll tell a joke or you'd tell the
best joke.
Maybe a little crude, maybe real crude.
And they'd laugh.
I'd laugh.
But inside me there's somebody saying it isn't
funny.
It is too funny.
You know, no, it isn't funny.
Come on, God, you've got to lighten up.
Get a sense of humor, you know, or
something.
Or you, because you just, you're going through
a battle and you don't know how to
solve it.
You don't know what in the world to
do with all of this stuff.
And you find there it's not, not too
long.
You don't have to be a Christian very
long until you come to realize that a
carnal Christian is about the most miserable person
on the planet.
Oftentimes far happier before you're a Christian than
when you become one.
Because you still go on, you still have
this nature that you live fine with, so
you thought before you were saved, but now
all of a sudden it doesn't work any
longer.
But tragically, even at the time when I
was a Christian, I would go to people,
I'd ask them.
Other Christians, older Christians or something, getting, you
know, I'd get involved in ministry, I'd get
involved in sharing.
I love sharing.
I love sharing the Lord.
I love leading people to Christ.
But still, no matter what I did, as
much as I could do all of this
stuff, I still had this nature.
I could still, you know, read the Bible
and love the Bible and talk to people
about the Lord and share, you know, on
campus.
But at the same time, while all of
this is going on, there's this inner light
that is just sitting there, almost taunting you,
almost mocking you as a human being, as
a Christian.
And you're there dealing with all this internal
kind of condemning crud or something there that
goes on, thinking it's just going to finally
one day get tired and drop off, and
it doesn't.
And you wonder, well, what do you do
with it?
I remember one time I got up enough
courage to talk to some older Christians, I
thought, that more mature, that I could tell
them this is the battle that's going on
within me, the heart of my thoughts, my
anger, my lust, or my frustrations, or my
hostilities.
And as I finally kind of poured all
this out, I told this to somebody, and
they looked at me, and they said, you
know, we need to pray for you.
And I'll never forget, they told me, you're
under the pile.
That's what they told me, I was under
the pile, and they need to pray for
me.
Somehow or another, that didn't do it.
You know, whatever it was, and in this
time, you know, you got to get the
victory.
But I'll never forget, quote unquote, I was
under the pile.
And I found myself there wondering what in
the world that was, you know, sort of
a thing there, to be under the pile,
and then I found out as time went
on, it was kind of a catch-all
Christian phrase at the time, that basically they
should have said, hey, live with it.
I got the same problem, I don't know
what to do about it either, so I'll
pray for you.
But nothing will probably happen, because it hasn't
happened for me either.
But then I just learned to be quiet,
and work on the wonderful Christian of activity
and art of hypocrisy, where you just kind
of cover it up as if it isn't
there, and if you aren't struggling with it,
it's not real.
I got pretty good at it, I suppose,
I think we all learned that.
I remember one time literally telling this fellow,
you know, what do you mean under the
pile?
I get out from under it for time,
but then it finds me again, and I'm
back under this pile, and I said, I
got this sneaky suspicion, I am the pile,
you know, sort of a thing there, and
I don't know what in the world to
do about it.
But there's all these different ways that people
deal with things.
In the 70s, one of the things that
happened with the perfection of the saints, when
they told everybody to go get perfect, and
they weren't doing it, and it wasn't working.
The next thing that kind of happened back
then, is it kind of got followed up
with the whole, the big doctrine of Christians
being demon-possessed.
Well, it's the reason you got this trouble
with your anger, is you got the demon
of anger.
And so all the angry people, you know,
you just got to get the demon of
anger cast out, or if, you know, you
had the demon of lust, you just got
to get the demon of lust capped out,
or the demon of nicotine.
There is the, you know, the demon of
alcohol, demon of drugs.
One time, I heard of the chocolate demon,
you know, I'm serious.
My wife wanted that one cast in her,
actually.
Dark chocolate, but the, specifically, but sometimes, I
mean, with all these just simple ways that
here you got a problem, you just cast
it out, you know, sort of a thing.
And, but in the meantime, just coming to
the realization that these are sin, and they're
wrong.
A few years back, I remember when we
were going through a move, I happened to
come out, and some guys that were helping
us move, they're from a moving company, one
of my sons is talking to him, and
evidently, the fella just, a gal had just
walked by, and he'd made some real clear
remarks about what he thought of this girl,
and my son was telling him, he says,
by the way, that's lust, and that's wrong.
And he says, what do you mean that's
wrong?
And so my son came to me, he
said, Dad, where does it say in the
Bible that if a man looks at a
woman with lust after her, and I told
him, sure, I remember where it was, and
he went in, got his Bible, and came
out, and next thing I know, he and
this fella, they got the Bible open, and
he's reading it to him.
He said, if a man looks at a
woman with lust after his heart, you know,
he's committed adultery, and this fella's reading it,
and he's going, oh, no, no, that can't
be there.
And he's, he was the most unhappy guy
you'd ever heard, he's reading it over and
over, that's, no.
And he looked there, and he says, but
this is one of my favorite pastimes.
He says, I love lusting.
He's there, he's just quite honest.
He obviously wasn't, you know, a fully grown
Christian where you'd learn to say, oh, no,
I don't do that.
But the, I don't have any problem with
that.
But the, but the answer for it isn't
casting it out.
The answer isn't hiding it.
The answer isn't waiting for it to go
away.
The answer is mourning over it.
The answer is the same answer that Jesus
had over sin.
He mourned over it.
He wept over it.
He died.
And when something happens within me, I don't
believe we're ever free of these things until
something grieves us so much that we find
ourself wanting to die.
And then when we realize that the issue
isn't having, you know, that we physically need
to die.
And one time years ago, and I don't
recommend this, I've never done it again, but
I did it one day, the woman called
and wanted, she said she was going to
commit suicide.
And I said, oh, and she's, it was
kind of a last ditch effort.
And considering it, and that's where they're at
and they're going to do it, but made
one last call, see if there's any hope.
And so as she went on and talked
about her life, I said, you know something,
it's not often I do this, but I
agree with you.
And I said, I recommend suicide in this
case.
But I said, I have a couple of
questions to ask you before you rush off
and do it.
And she said, what is that?
Desperate now, she's more desperate than ever.
But I said, is your heart beating?
Okay, yeah.
Blood flowing?
Yeah.
Body works?
Yeah.
So nothing really wrong with your body.
No, it's just the person that lives inside
then.
Yes, I guess so.
Well, then there's no reason to kill the
body.
Just got to find out who is it
in there that's doing all this stuff and
kill them.
And you see, this is precisely the battle.
This is precisely the issue.
I was just hoping I could get through
the conversation enough before she pulled the trigger,
and fortunately I did on that time.
But the thing is, is that when we
realize, oftentimes I want to die, I just
want to die.
Well, that is so often spiritually when we
realize that's what's got to happen.
There's got to come a place to where
there is a true death.
When we find there within our heart, and
sometimes, but until we mourn over it, until
we grieve.
Many people, they live with their lust until
finally some embarrassing thing happens.
They get caught with pornography, or they get
caught in some affair.
Something happens where finally it breaks their heart.
Finally, they find God has got to die.
It's destroying everything that's precious to me.
Or it's their anger that they just lose
it.
And the family finally says, we can't take
you any longer.
Or they lose relationship after relationship, or job
after job, or one aspect of their nature,
whatever the addiction may be, whatever the problem.
But when finally we mourn, and we grieve
over it, is the day that then the
Lord says, now we're ready.
You know, the thing that so often we
have the greatest trouble learning in the Christian
life is that victory in the Christian life,
it isn't by effort.
It isn't by promise.
It isn't by trying.
It isn't by crying.
It's by dying.
It's by being able to spiritually put our
head on the chopping block and say, God,
this area of my life, it's got to
die.
It's got to be over.
I can't stand it.
I know you can't stand it.
You've been speaking to me about it for
years.
I've hidden it for years, covered it for
years, denied it for years.
But now it's embarrassing me as a human
being before you.
It doesn't have to go to full exposure.
It doesn't have to go to where it
ruins necessarily anything else in our life.
It's just got to come to the place
where it ruins us, where we cry out
within us.
And when finally that day happens, then the
next one, where we're in tonight, about to
close, but these are like falling to me,
you know, off a, you know, ladder or
something.
You just go down one step and the
rest you'll just keep going.
But there, when he says, oh, how happy
are the meek.
What essentially is happening here, that a person
there who is poor in spirit and they
mourn over it, it has this wonderful way
of where it produces within them a meekness.
It produces within them a gentleness, a brokenness
there that happens within them.
There it is something to where within their
heart or within their life, now they stand
before God knowing they deserve nothing but condemnation.
They stand before God in their guilt.
They stand before God in their hopelessness and
standing before God that way instead of now
with their list of demands or God, you
owe me or God, I want this or
God, I want anything.
Now they're looking there and they cry out
for mercy and say, God, please don't give
me what I've got coming.
Please don't give me what ought to be
mine.
And then when the Lord comes and he
loves them and he forgives them and they
understand his atonement, they understand his mercy, they
become somebody there that becomes this tremendously meek
person.
They become somebody there that within their heart
or within their life, they can't believe how
good God is to them.
They can't believe how merciful he is, how
kind he is, how loving he is, how
accepting he is.
Nobody else would ever accept me knowing what
I know and what you know.
And yet you knowing it, you still love
me.
Knowing these struggles, knowing this nature.
Of course, he knows it.
He knows it so well, deeply.
But the wonderful thing is that when we
find ourselves there, you know, in meekness before
God, gentleness, and Jesus said a happy man
is a meek man, whether it be all
that's happening is that meekness is just simply
being before man what I am before God
now.
I realize before God, you know, I haven't
got what I deserve and then if anybody
else will still love me and be my
friend, anybody else will share their heart of
their life with me, I'm as amazed as
I am before God.
I'm amazed at God's goodness.
And meekness is a fruit of being poor
in spirit.
It's a response to mourning over it.
And then you realize you aren't dead, you
aren't killed, you aren't done.
God has only been letting the part that
ought to die, cutting out the spiritual cancer.
That's all he's been ever wanting to do,
never destroy our life.
He's been wanting to give us life.
But when we realize there, God forgive me
and God cleanse me and God help me.
It's interesting, the Bible tells us about Moses
that he was very meek above all the
men which were upon the face of the
earth.
Moses of all people, look at this fella.
And when the Bible tells me that Moses
was the meekest man on the face of
the earth, I would almost personally think he'd
be just the opposite.
I think if ever there would be a
proud man, it'd be Moses.
I think if ever there was a guy
that you'd come along to that in one
interview and had a big head, probably you'd
think it'd be Moses.
After all, the man literally ruled the course
of nature for 40 years.
This guy opened up river, got water out
of rocks, manna from heaven, pillar of fire
by night, a cloud by day over them,
destroyed enemies, raised up his rod and armies
fell.
Literally, whatever this man did and whatever he
seemingly wanted to do, stood before God, received
the 10 commandments, came down, he opened the
earth, people got sucked into the thing.
I mean, this guy is something for 40
years.
But the thing is, the Bible says that
Moses was the meekest man on the face
of the earth.
It's quite astounding, isn't it?
How would that happen?
Well, when you go back and you trace
his life, you realize Moses, of course, as
somebody once said about Moses, he spent the
first 40 years of his life becoming somebody.
Spend the next 40 years of his life
becoming nobody.
And then the last 40 years of his
life, God was everybody through him.
I suppose if Moses actually had done what
he did at 40, he would have been
the most proud man without question.
And Moses there, exceedingly fair, educating all the
wisdom and the knowledge of the Egyptians, mighty
in word and deed, son of the daughter
of Pharaoh.
If he at 40 years old, when it
came into his heart that God wanted, he
used him to set the children of Israel
free.
If he'd gone out and opened the river,
you know, and they'd all walked through and
Moses would have done anything at all.
And you'd interview him on the other side
of the river and say, Moses, that was
something.
If there's CNN and all of them, they're
over there on the other side.
Whoa, how did you do that?
Well, I don't know.
I am exceedingly fair.
Being educated in all the wisdom and knowledge
of Egyptians probably played into it.
Being mighty in word and deed has never
held me back much either.
Being son of the daughter of Pharaoh and
in line to become Pharaoh, I was always
poised for greatness.
Who knows which one of my attributes was
really responsible?
You know, I mean, he would I imagine
at that point, but then God took him
in there.
He spent 40 years.
Finally, he finds himself not before men and
before himself and his own image of himself
and his pride or his arrogance, but God
broke all that stuff out of it.
He mourned and he grieved and he's before
God, an empty, broken man at 80 years
old.
God says, now let's go do it.
And Moses said, I can't and they won't
listen to me.
I'm not eloquent.
You know, they won't believe me.
And now all of it was gone.
Everything was gone.
He was nothing.
But there he stood before God and the
life of God and the power of God
and God's mercy and God's grace.
And he took him and he sent him
out there and he sent him before.
Goes before Pharaoh, throws the rod down and
became a serpent.
Brings the plagues upon the, you know, the
earth.
Opens the river.
I imagine at 80 years old, if you'd
asked Moses, how did you do that?
He'd have probably looked at you and I
and said, you know, I have the slightest
idea.
I have the faintest idea.
I was scared like everybody else.
I had this stick in my hand.
God said, stretch it out.
So I stretched it out and whoa, it
opened.
I couldn't believe it either.
Was that something or what?
I didn't do it.
I just, it wasn't like I went there,
you know, or something.
He just, he just told me what to
do.
And I just learned to do what I
was told.
I just do what I'm told, just under
orders.
I love him and he's forgiven me and
he's made me his own.
He's called me to himself.
I can't believe that now he even wants
to use my life and I just give
it to him.
Pouring spirit, I mourned over it and he
still accepted me anyway, in spite of me,
not because of me.
And now I go out and I stretch
it out.
I don't know how to open.
And that, wasn't that something?
If you ever figure out how I did
it, let me know.
Try it again.
You know, who knows what he, but he,
a meekest man on the face of the
earth.
You see somebody there that has been before
God like this, it'll always produce meekness.
Always.
Man who's truly before God, the great fruit
of it.
I remember years ago, the first time, I've
only met him a couple of times, but
the first time I had the opportunity to
meet Billy Graham, I was a relatively new
Christian.
And he actually was speaking in Pasadena, something
to a group of pastors.
And I, my brother got me a ticket
in to be able to go hear him.
It was, the audience was just filled with
leaders and pastors.
And I went in to hear him.
He'd led me to Christ and his crusade.
And so I just wanted to hear him
so bad.
So I got in, I heard him.
And then after it's all over, we're walking
down the street, my brother and I, next
thing you know, Charles Fuller is walking there.
And so we start talking to Charles Fuller.
And as we're talking, you know, he asked
me a little about me and I told
him, well, I got saved to Billy Graham's
crusade.
He says, well, would you like to meet
him?
I said, yeah.
He says, well, come on, I'm having lunch
with him.
So he takes us down a room, we
come in and here's, you know, this good
size room, maybe 50 by 50.
But over on the other side, there's just
a couple tables set and for lunch.
And, and over there, there's Billy and a
bunch of, you know, spiritual giants, you know,
all standing around talking.
And, and we walk in there.
And as soon as we got in there,
somebody needed Charles Fuller for something.
He says, I'll be right back.
And he left us.
And we're standing there over here and about
40 feet over there, they're talking.
And then every couple minutes though, Billy would
look over, we were staring at him.
Then we'd look away like I'm not looking.
Did I look like I would?
No, I know, honest, you know, and, and
then he'd look back and we, and finally,
after a few minutes, he saw him shake
hands and, you know, excuse himself.
And he walks right across the room.
There was no place to go.
He's coming straight at us, looking at us.
Oh, no, we're in trouble now.
And he, you know, he comes out and
he sticks his hand right out to me.
And he says, hi, my name is Billy
Graham.
What's yours?
And when I eventually remembered it, you know,
I, I told him and, uh, and, uh,
he's, we start talking.
I said, boy, this is so wonderful just
to be able to meet you.
I said, I came to the Lord in
your crusade.
He said, you did?
Well, tell me about it.
I said, oh, my parents got me.
I was up there and you know, you
don't, yeah, you, you, you know, or whatever.
And I'm talking to him about this.
And he sat and listened to me like
I was the only guy that led to
the Lord.
He wanted to know everything about it.
What are you doing now?
You still walk?
Oh, yeah, I'm serving him.
Really?
What are you doing?
Well, as a matter of fact, I'm planning
to take your place, you know, or whatever.
I didn't say that.
I just thought it, you know, but the,
but here, you know, we're kind of, you
know, going on.
But as I were talking away, you know,
I look over and these guys are staring
at us because these guys wanted to have
lunch with him.
He's talking.
I'm so embarrassed.
I said, you know something?
I thought we, I don't think we're supposed
to be in here.
And I said, I think you're supposed to
be over there and we're going to be
in trouble.
And he said, look, I'll never forget this.
He said, I have lunch with guys like
this all the time.
It's not often I get to speak to
somebody about, like you and just talk about
Jesus.
And he says, so don't worry about that.
You know, so I kind of leaned over
a bunch of monkey.
We're talking about the passing of the baton.
We'll be done in a while, you know,
or whatever, you know, carrying on.
But as I look back on that thing,
I realized here on one hand was this
awesome man with incredible authority and power that
the Lord had given to him.
And yet he was about to meet this
guy.
And what a sad thing is I look
back and realize here is this twerp of
a Christian there standing there with him, dreaming
of being like him to abuse the power
that I dream of.
With he who had it, used it the
way it ought to be used.
Open, gentle, meek, approachable, love to talk, love
to share.
Realize, I look back and realize what an
incredibly different, you know, when I realized there,
I think Billy, he was amazed himself that
so many people come to Christ by him.
So amazed the way God had used him.
He was as blown away, I think, as
Moses was.
But then again, that's what happens when somebody
lives before Jesus.
He said, come unto me, all that labor
and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest.
My burden is light, my yoke is easy,
for I am meek and lowly of heart.
Jesus, so incredibly meek, the ultimate of meekness,
wasn't he?
The example of it, the perfection of meekness.
And when you look at Jesus there in
his absolute meekness, he not only came, he
took upon our sin, and he took our
place on the cross, and he took our
shame, and he took all these things upon
himself, but he did it so gently, he
did it so meekly, as a lamb done
before the slaughter, he uttered not a word,
didn't complain.
So meek, so gentle.
A bruised wreath, the Bible says, he would
not break.
A smoking flax, he wouldn't quench.
Somebody there so meek, so gentle at life,
so caring, so loving.
And he dies quietly, lying in a tomb
for three days, rose up some three days
later, and then what did he do?
He just came looking for those that would
love him and want to follow him, that's
all he was interested in.
And he did it so meekly.
I mean, such power, incredible power, when you
think of this.
The capacity there, hanging upon the cross to
call legions of angels, I say that's it.
They don't need this.
Right there at his beck and call, just
surrounding him, right there at that very moment,
waiting for a motion, waiting for a word,
while he's being mocked and spat upon and
ridiculed, blood dripping from his face, from his
back, from his hands, from his feet, from
inside.
And while they're shooting out the lips of
others he saved, himself he could not save.
No, himself he would not save.
So meek, so gentle.
And when he's resurrected, he never, never, this
is one of the most incredible things about
him, so meek, he never shoved in the
Sanhedrin's face, never did anything.
To me, so meek.
Sometimes I think about Jesus, the opportunities he
missed.
You know, if he'd only had me as
his manager, some of the stuff he could
have done with that power.
I mean, wouldn't it have been wild if
right after the resurrection, while the Sanhedrin's down
there having their big party, they killed him,
you know, they got him out of the
way, this huge problem they've got.
Wouldn't you just love after the resurrection, you
don't have to do a lot, just go
and tap on the door.
Hi.
Happy Easter, you know, or whatever.
I mean, you just shove it in their
face, you know, or something.
I mean, I still think he should have
done it.
It would have been great to me, but
that's the difference, isn't it?
But when somebody there, you know, what's happening,
somebody, when they're no defense, nothing to defend.
Somebody's poor in spirit, and they mourn over
it, and they honestly, you know, can say,
I'm a sinner.
And like Paul, you know, in Romans, you
know, Paul says, I know that in me,
that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good
thing.
Now, in the King James, that sounds kind
of nice.
It almost sounds nice, oratorical sort of it.
Now in me, that is, in my flesh
dwelleth no good thing.
I think, wow, that's heavy.
I like that, this particular one in the
Living Bible, it says, I know that insofar
as my sinful self is concerned, I am
rotten through and through.
Now that's getting to it.
But when somebody comes to the realization that
my sinful nature is rotten through and through,
that's a person that's poor in spirit, and
they mourn over it.
And that will produce meekness.
Because if you've got something that you honestly
have come to the realization, it's rotten through
and through.
It is sinful.
There's nothing redeeming about it.
There's nothing good about it.
Nothing hopeful about it.
And we honestly realize that about ourself.
Then a meek person, there's no reason to
defend it.
No pride left, nothing to be proud of.
Nothing at all.
We're only proud if we've got something.
I mean, you go to the White House,
they protect it, because they're proud of it.
Yeah, they've got all sorts of, you know,
you go see the Hope Diamond.
I don't know if you've been there.
I've seen that.
You know, they're proud of it.
It's beautiful.
It's worth it.
It's precious.
They've got all sorts of infrared devices and
security cameras and everything to protect it.
Because if there's something worth something, you protect
it.
You're proud of it.
You care about it.
But when it's worthless, you don't care.
Who protects anything that's worthless?
You ever driven by the city dump and
seen any, you know, surveillance cameras there over
the thing?
Gone to city dump and there they got
all, you know, infrared devices and motion detectors
to see if anybody's trying to sneak in
and steal the trash, you know, or something
there.
All right, who's after today's garbage, you know?
I mean, you don't have to protect it.
And meekness is when somebody, they don't have
anything to protect.
A meek person is somebody who says, you
know, you can't say anything bad enough about
me.
Every once in a while I hear stuff
about me.
There's something that somebody's got to say that
maybe isn't that nice.
And tell you the truth, most of the
time I just think, Lord, I'm so grateful
they don't know the whole truth.
They'd really get me, you know, I mean,
they'd really have me dead.
They only know half the truth.
And we oftentimes just want to argue technicalities
because there's a pride that wants to restore
self.
But when we realize, God, there's nothing worth
defending.
I don't care to protect anything.
I just want what you want within me.
And when there's somebody that teaches us a
meekness, when in a home, when you find
there a person doesn't have to have their
will, doesn't have to have their way, something's
died.
And something's been mourned over and has produced
a gentleness and a meekness within them, within
their home and their marriage and their family.
That there they find themselves, you know, humbled
and quiet.
They can't believe God is so good to
them.
They can't believe God has blessed them so
much.
Oh, everything isn't perfect, but it certainly isn't
anything like it could be.
And how wonderful God has been, how graceful
he's been.
The people he's given to me.
And instead of in my pride finding some
little thing that I want to pick at
and don't like, there when you find yourself
there, God, I can't believe you've given to
me all that you've given.
And that's a person that affects their life.
It affects their relationships.
And it ultimately affects their happiness.
They find there, because they've hit bedrock and
they find themselves, God, it's not hard being
honest.
You can be happy right now tonight, wonderfully
happy.
But you've just got to be willing to
put your head on the chopping block and
let it die.
And then not try to go out being
proud of anything when we're done.
I remember back in, oh, 60s, 70s, I
can't remember when it is.
There was a big debate going on in
Congress over Panama Canal, whether to give it
back to Panama or not.
And the debate was going back and forth,
and Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, maybe you remember
him, he was a California senator.
Hayakawa stood up there on the Senate floor,
and he said, listen, we stole it fair
and square, we ought to keep it.
That was his argument.
We stole it fair and square, we got
it, we ought to keep it.
But you know, it's interesting, that's the way
a lot of Christians are about their life.
We stole our life away from God and
sin.
It wasn't fair and square, but we stole
it.
We've got this ego, we've got this pride,
we've got this self-life, something that was
never designed by God.
It was just the response to the fall.
Arrogance.
I, me, my, myself, I'll have, I want,
get out of my way.
And this flesh, this nature that crept up
there and just formed and grew out of
sin.
Yeah, you know, we stole it fair and
square, you might say, and sin.
But there's no reason to keep it.
Wonderful thing as a Christian, I can come
and say, God, I don't want to keep
it.
And to realize that God looks and he
says, you know, there's a way you can
give it back.
It's called the cross.
And we're going to close, but one of
the things I suggest, maybe afterwards, if you
find yourself there where, God, I'm, you don't
have to wait to get embarrassed, you don't
have to wait for some terrible trial.
There may be things in your own heart
and life, even tonight, God is saying, this
needs to die.
This needs to be put upon the chopping
block.
You need to let it go.
You need to let it be buried.
And you need to be crucified with Christ
and take this.
You don't have to just try to get
over it or hide it or be a
hypocrite about it and say it's not there.
And just come and you won't surprise God.
I'm sure you won't surprise one person that
you'll be praying with.
You may think you will.
I want, you know, you may go to
your wife tonight and say, honey, pray for
me.
I want to tell you something about myself
that you don't know.
I know we've been married for 30 years,
but I'm an angry person.
She might say, oh, well, dear me, you
know, kids, guess what your father said?
What?
Are we in trouble again?
You know, but when you say I'm tired
of it and it's wrong and I want
to be meek, I want God to teach
me his gentleness and his meekness.
I'll tell you, you'll be happy.
Those around you will be happy.
They're going to discover something wonderful.
The Christian life, it's a wonderful thing, but
it isn't cheap.
It'll cost you your life to get it.
Whosoever would save his life will lose it,
but whosoever would lose his life for my
sake, the same shall save him.
And Jesus there today, he says, I've got
my whole life, all the joy of heaven
for you, but you've got to be willing
to pay the price.
And the price is that of death.
Paul said, I die daily.
It's a never-ending thing.
It isn't as you do it once and
it's over.
It's a constant work of God.
Father, we thank you for your love and
for your word.
And Lord, I thank you for the joy
that you want us to know.
I thank you, Lord, that you desire to
take us and to give us a joy
unspeakable.
That you look at us and you don't
tell us these things to make us feel
bad.
You tell us because you want us to
know you know.
It doesn't make you love us less.
It doesn't make you angry at us.
You're not even disappointed with us.
You're God.
You know these battles better than anyone.
It must break your heart to watch us
try to fight it with all the wrong
equipment.
To watch us try to hide it or
be done with it or ignore it.
Or act as if it's not there.
Or to somehow or another psychologically just kind
of smooth it over.
Or excuse it and explain it.
Because you see, I've had a tough life.
That's why.
None of that does us any good until
finally we find ourself before you, Jesus.
Saying, Lord, would you please help me?
This is probably one of the reasons you
died, isn't it?
One of the very things you died for.
So you know all about it.
I know I'm not surprising you.
Now will you please forgive me?
I want to put my finger right on
it and call it what it is.
Please forgive me.
And Lord, more than anything, I'd love to
be free.
And the evidence of that freedom and that
emptiness and that brokenness may it be meekness.
May I be a person that I just
can't believe that you would give to me
your love.
That you would look at me and say,
can we go home together?
Can I fill you with my love and
with my spirit?
Oh, you're not perfect.
You'll never be till you see me face
to face.
But if we can keep meeting like this,
now we're going somewhere.
If we can keep opening our hearts like
this, we're going to get to real joy.
If you can deal with the things in
honesty and what you're really all about, then
I can tell you what I'm really all
about too.
It's far more powerful than anything you are.
Lord, may you help us to know your
love.
And as a result of it, may we
not only be happy, but may it be
a joy that we realize through it I've
fallen in love with God.
The one who loves me, gave himself for
me, and continues to do it all the
time.
So Lord, we thank you for your love.
We thank you for your word.
And Lord, may we be free.
Maybe some of us tonight, we just would
like to die.
But yet you'd look at us and say,
well, I agree with that.
But let's kill the right thing.
It's not your body.
It's just the nature inside.
Lord, teach us this.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.