The Way Back Home: The Meek | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

This series is actually so great because I do feel I was telling somebody uh after first service, you know, I feel zero anxiety being here.

You know, it's so nice.

I feel like I'm back home.

And that's like, yeah, great, okay, yeah.

I I feel like this series is perfectly titled, you know, The Way Back Home.

Uh I was thinking about that flying into good old SJC.

I was like, this feels like home.

And what a gift I have.

What a great privilege that I have like two places I can call home.

You know, we're in the Bay Area, we've worked here for four years, but we're total in the Bay Area for like seven years.

And it just feels uh like home.

And what does home feel like?

You know, it to me, it feels like Portland and it feels like the Bay Area.

And it feels that way because the people that I am with when I'm in those spaces are comforting presence.

I feel like they understand me, I understand them, and it feels like kind of the place I'm supposed to be, where I'm supposed to be.

That's what home is like, you know?

And some of us maybe grew up with different homes that we have never felt that way.

God, in his rich mercy, is provided and is providing for us a home, a place to be with him, rightly related with him, rightly knowing him.

And even if you grew up in a dark home and a difficult home, God is the good father with a good home, leading his good children back there.

And that's what this series is all about.

The Beatitudes is what we're looking at.

If you have a Bible, we're in Matthew chapter five, and last week Nassim brought an incredible, incredible message on uh the being poor in spirit.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

And what she said in there is that Jesus is granting us a benediction.

Blessed are, fill in the blank.

Poor in spirit was last week.

Jesus is also gonna bless those who mourn.

He's gonna bless today.

We're gonna look at the meek.

He blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

He blesses, he's giving these blessings.

And what she said was that one of the ways to translate that term, which in the in the Greek is makarios, is congratulations.

Congratulations.

I love the way that Ray Ortland, he's a pastor, he says that blessed is like a divine pat on the back.

Like you're doing great, you know?

Kind of makes me think of Father's Day.

If you had a good dad or even a decent dad, maybe you got that pat on the back from your dad one day of like, good job, you're doing great.

I love to describe that term blessed as not just congratulations, not just a divine pat on the back, but like you're headed in the right direction.

You're going the right way, you're doing great.

This is where you should be.

Keep going, be encouraged.

That's the blessing that comes from Jesus.

Heading towards rightly relating with God.

And these beatitudes and benedictions, it it they're blessings, if you if you really pay attention to them, they're blessings of a kind of state that people are in, right?

Those who mourn, those who are poor in spirit, those who are persecuted, that's another one.

That's a kind of state that you're in, right?

And the beatitudes, they're less of God like blessing of virtue, which we kind of think they are.

A virtue is like a moral or a kind of countenance that we should aspire to.

Like you should be poor in spirit, something like that, right?

But that's not really what the beatitudes are about.

They're less about God blessing a virtue, they're really more about God blessing a void.

When something is lacking, not so much an attitude, like the kind of person I am, but a condition in which we find ourselves desperate before God.

Poor in spirit, hunger and thirsting for righteousness, mourning, meekness, all of these things are a condition we find ourselves in that Jesus points at and goes, congrats, that's the right direction to go in.

This is what Frederick Dale Bruner says in his commentary on this passage.

These beatitudes do not, first of all, describe people, look at this, with good spiritualities.

You know, the people who are up to date on the mindfulness podcasts and reading all the good books, you know, those are the people of good spiritualities.

It's not really describing those.

If that's you today, congrats in another way.

I don't know.

But that's not who Jesus is congratulating.

That's important to know.

Not people with good spiritualities, so much to describe people in bad situations.

Mourning, persecution, poverty.

Okay?

He's blessing those people.

We will miss the gospel or like the good news of Jesus' blessings, and we will miss their worldwideness too, if we prematurely hear Jesus blessing virtues or good attitudes.

Today, I think the bad news is I can't tell you how to be meek.

I would love to.

In fact, it would make me feel super good about myself, right?

Pastors love to tell you what to do.

Hey, you want to be meek?

Here's four ways to be meek.

You know, one, two, three, four.

This is how you develop meekness.

And then let's get out of here.

That makes me feel better and you feel worse.

Sounds like a good day.

Um, pastors love doing that.

I can't do that today because it would be dishonoring the text, be dishonoring the greatest benediction ever given to humanity, the Beatitudes.

Uh but it puts me in a precarious position.

How do we preach this?

Because Jesus is simply pointing out something in us as human beings that he is affirming and blessing.

The Beatitudes, the good news though, is they're not a list of heavy burdens, a to-do list.

They're a list of these attributes of those who are knowing God rightly, a state they are in or will be in one day.

They are that condition.

In that condition, we hear Jesus blessing us.

Today I want you to hear Jesus blessing you if you find yourself in that condition.

And these, don't make, make no mistake, these blessings Jesus gives, uh, they are not blessings our culture gives, even our Christian culture gives.

Our Christian culture applauds the gifted.

Our Christian culture applauds the testimony that is done, right?

The person who's like, didn't know God, they wrestled with God, they went through addiction, now they know God.

We applaud.

We don't applaud the person who stands up and goes, My life is a mess, I'm currently mourning, uh, I do not know what to do, but I hope God helps me.

We're like, that's awkward, that's confusing.

But Jesus looks at that and says, Congratulations.

What a different word.

And Jesus today says this in Matthew 5, 5.

Blessed, congratulations.

You're heading in the right direction, those of you that are meek.

For they shall inherit the earth.

Meek.

This word in the Koine Greek.

You want to learn some Greek today?

You're gonna have to.

Wake up.

Look at me.

The word is prous.

Can you say it?

Prous, thank you.

The Greek word, it's translated meek here, it's also translated in other passages as gentle, as mild.

I like this one.

Those who make no claims for themselves, this scholar also said, like, or who can't make claims for themselves because they don't have any power.

Aristotle, not in the theological tradition, but in the philosophical tradition, he defines this word, he also wrote in Greek, in Koine Greek, classical Greek, as strength under control.

He talks about a horse.

I don't know a lot of horses, I grew up in the city.

Uh, this metaphor was lost on me, but it might help you.

A horse, apparently, you know, you look at it and it's like, this thing could kill me.

But it has a control to its strength, especially when it's harnessed and when it's, you know, tied up.

That actually, though it has great power, it is a meek animal in that it is strength that is under control.

Maybe that helps you if you're from somewhere I'm not from.

This is that word.

I'm trying to get you a flavor for this word.

This is the kind of person that Jesus celebrates.

And make no mistake, this person, look at these descripting terms, right?

They are not getting retweeted on the internet.

They are not going viral.

This person, I might prophesy today, would never win political office in this country.

It just won't happen with these characteristics.

The culture does not congratulate this person.

And Jesus does.

Why?

If I can't tell you today how to be meek and give you a self-help sermon, I can show you, though, meekness biblically.

And I can show it to you through the one who lived it, which is the one who gave this blessing, Jesus Christ Himself, the meek one, the one who came in gentleness and a mild heart.

And today I can only hope and pray that God would show you who he is and his heart, and that might help you see the meekness in your own heart, the meekness of Jesus, his gentle heart, his humble arrival, and his profound promise.

That's the plan for today.

I gotta pray because I don't know how to do this without the Holy Spirit.

Let's pray.

Oh God, what a tall order you've given us.

It's impossible for us to understand this blessing, to receive this blessing, which is all the whole point of a blessing.

It's impossible for us to receive this blessing unless your Holy Spirit impresses it upon us.

And so may your gentleness and your meekness be present with us, and may our hearts be soft enough to hear something we're kind of fidgety to hear.

And I pray particularly for those that have their metaphorical arms crossed, a distance, an ambivalence out of grace and out of gentleness, kindly destroy that pride in me and in us.

Because we gotta hear something that's good.

We need your good news.

It's only gonna come from you.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

The meekness of Jesus, his gentle heart, his humble arrival, his profound promise.

Jesus has a gentle heart.

He has a gentle heart.

I told you this word pops up, prouse, a few times in the New Testament.

It's translated different ways.

Shows up in Matthew 5.5, blessed are the meek.

If you go a few pages to the right to Matthew chapter 11, it appears again in this verse where Jesus says these profound words that I know Ryan has preached on recently.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

Why?

Because I am gentle.

There's that word, prouse, I am prouse.

I am meek, gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Why does Jesus congratulate the meek?

Why does he say they're going in the right direction?

Because they are headed straight for his heart.

They're going right to the meekness that is the heart of God.

They're headed in the right direction.

This is the only time, Charles Spurgeon says, the only time in all the gospels where Jesus directly tells us what his heart is like.

Isn't that interesting?

Now there's many times in the Gospels where like you can assume or presume where Jesus' heart is.

It says he has compassion on people.

It says he's moved.

It says he weeps.

It says that he mourns for people.

There's moments where Jesus shows us his heart.

There's one place he tells us his heart.

Right here.

Emphatically, out of the word, the mouth of Jesus, he looks at us and he says, Take my yoke.

You know what a yoke is, it's like the the thing that would be laid on an animal as they're going and plowing and working in the field, right?

It's like, put this on because it's gentle, because I am gentle.

My yoke is easy, my burden is light, he says later.

I am gentle and lowly.

That's what my heart is.

Now, the heart, to you and me, is the center of our emotional life.

When you say I have a heart for something, it means that you emotionally care about it and are emotionally invested in it.

In the ancient world, the heart was not the center of emotions, it was the center of everything about you.

It was the center of your emotions, but it was also the center of your will, the center of everything you want, your desires, the center of your behaviors.

The heart was the center and the seat for all understanding about an individual.

You want to know somebody, you can know their heart.

That's why Scripture says, guard your heart above all else.

Proverbs 4.23.

For from it flow the springs of life.

Everything flows from the heart.

Now, knowing that, look back at this verse of Matthew 11, 29.

I am gentle and lowly in heart.

The center of God's being, the very essence of his nature is prowess.

He's telling you directly, gentle and lowly, meek, in the words of the Beatitude.

You know, God is described most often in the Old Testament in a funny phrase, English translation is slow to anger.

Slow to anger.

I'll always remember learning the Hebrew word for that phrase.

It's one word in the Hebrew when I was in seminary.

It literally means long nostriled.

Because like when you're pissed, your nostrils flare up, right?

So the Hebrew word is like God takes a long time to flare the nostrils.

He's slow to anger.

And it's repeated, it's the most quoted scripture in all the Old Testament.

And when I was thinking about when else does God directly tell me what he's like?

Again, so many places where he shows me what he's like, many places where the prophets say this is what God's like, what the psalmist says, God, you are this, but where does God, out of the mouth of God, say, This is my nature, this is who I am?

It happens with Moses in Exodus 34, is one time.

There's a few other times, but one to highlight is he's passing before Moses, and Yahweh, God Almighty, is proclaiming this about himself.

Yahweh, Yahweh, that's the Hebrew, the Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, there's our long-nostrelled word, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

In other words, he won't like pass over the guilty and like forget about grievous things that happen.

Instead, he will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

Look at that verse, keep it on the screen.

God's constant state, the core of who he is, is found in his heart.

And this heart, in Exodus 34 and Matthew 11, is one of relaxing love, gentleness.

He is meekness, strength under control.

His anger, Psalm 30, verse 5 says, His anger is but for a moment.

Psalms 30:5

Just a moment.

His anger is for a moment.

His wrath is for a moment.

His judgment is absolutely real.

God judges evil in this world and he will judge it.

His wrath is cataclysmic.

You do not want to be on the other side of it.

But that is not his heart.

Let me repeat that.

His anger is real, his judgment is real, but that is not his heart.

Nor is it God's primary countenance.

God will punish the guilty, but he's not always doing that.

What is he always doing?

What is the common disposition of his nature?

Prowess.

Gentleness, meekness, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

This is shocking to a lot of us who generally believe that God is mostly disappointed with our life.

I don't know about you, but I grew up thinking that God was generally disappointed with my life.

I grew up in the Catholic Church.

I grew up after that when I first came to Christianity in a pretty conservative evangelical church.

And I would say for a lot of my life, I did not believe myself to be the object of God's love.

I believed myself to be the object of his scrutiny.

Many people walk around living this way.

Constantly thinking that God is the divine substitute teacher, waiting for the assignment to be turned in, and when it's late, there's deep disappointment.

Constant uh assessing of small, minor moral infractions and going, what the heck.

Now, you would never say that to me, especially not me.

I'm a pastor.

You'd be like, no, God loves me.

You'd never say that.

But you you live under that anxiety.

You're anxious about how God feels about you.

And let's throw on top of that, it's Father's Day, we might as well go here.

We all grew up in homes that were imperfect.

It doesn't matter how great your dad was or not.

I grew up with a decent dad who left when I was late in life, and we have no relationship.

Some of you know my know my story.

The environment in which we grow up shapes the way that we view God, and then the surrounding culture and all these things, and then the Bible tells you to call God a father, and these things are get so mixed up that you're not really seeing who God actually is, even when he's emphatically telling you directly, I am gentle.

Why would you live as if he's not?

Because we're we're broken.

Because the condition we are in is prowess.

We're meek.

We've been the strength has been taken out of us.

We don't even have the strength to be under control.

We're poor in spirit.

We're mourning the loss, the absences in our life.

See, we are in the Beatitudes.

And if we're if we're truly gonna be honest with each other today, that is our condition.

And we are constantly unable to receive the loving kindness of God because of that broken state.

We are convinced that God is not loving us right now, he's critically inspecting us.

And so, unable to receive God's love, we go two routes.

We either go towards apathy or towards ambition.

Depending on your kind of your own disposition and personality, you you might be in the apathetic route.

Unable to receive God's love, in the words of Romans 2, chapter 2, verse 4, you presume upon the riches and the kindness and forbearance and patience of God.

You presume upon it.

What does that mean?

You just think it'll all work out one day.

Hopefully, God loves me.

God's a loving God, I know that.

Uh He probably loves me, but it doesn't drive you, it doesn't possess you, it doesn't control you.

It just informs you lightly.

God loves me, I guess, and so I'll just kind of do my best, live my best, but ultimately be apathetic towards it.

But beware of confusing God's gentleness for ambivalence.

God is gentle, God is meek, God is slow to anger, but he is not ambivalent.

Remember, the word gentle in Matthew 11, the word meek, it's strength under control, right?

The image of the horse, right?

Exodus 34, the one we read, uh it's still up there, right?

Notice in here, he says abounding, like his nature is abounding in steadfast love and slow to anger, but notice what he says.

He will by no means clear the guilty, he will visit the iniquity, the sins, he will come back to the sins.

Again, but he's not always doing that, but he will do that one day.

He will judge, he will provide an execution of judgment upon sin.

He's not ambivalent.

Matthew 11, where we were earlier, if you're there right now, where he's talking about being gentle and lowly, the one that we love to put on coffee mugs and put on as like, you know, our Instagram profiles, right before that, he denounces cities and he provides woes to them.

You don't know what a woe is.

You're a 21st century American.

You got no idea.

I don't, I didn't know until I studied.

Woes are these pronouncements of complete desolation on people.

And he says this to a couple cities like Tyree and Sidon.

He says, It's gonna be worse for you than some of the cities that.

Receive judgment in the Old Testament.

You think the Old Testament is rough?

Wait till after the New Testament is completed.

There is judgment coming for these cities that are destroying poor people and wrecking the lives of women and children.

Judgment is coming.

That's right before the gentle and lowly passage, all right?

The domesticated Jesus must be let loose, okay?

That is not a real Jesus.

He says that, and then he says, I'm gentle and lowly.

And again, both things can be true because the general nature of his heart is meek.

The core of his being is slow to anger, but he executes judgment.

See, Jesus' anger and God's wrath, it's not like your anger and wrath or like mine.

We fly off the handle.

We have the short fuse.

We have all these phrases we use for anger.

We lost control.

God doesn't lose control.

God does, it's not just that God has a longer fuse.

It's that God does not have that relationship to anger that you have.

He has it totally under control and executes it for just a moment and then is back in and still in, even when he's in his anger, he's still in his gentleness and his lowliness and his love, steadfast love.

He is nothing like you.

And that's great news to hear today.

So beware of confusing God's gentleness for ambivalence.

The heart of God is the definition of the kind of father I aspire to.

And maybe if you're a dad today, you aspire to it.

A God that has strength under control that's truly meek.

But we also dismiss God's own love and his own meekness, his gentleness in our life, like him gently loving us.

We refuse it and we show ambition.

Christian ambition or creative ambition or secular ambition towards success, you name it, we don't want to hear that we are loved.

It's part of our own brokenness.

We would much rather get the sermon today about how to be meek.

This is again, some personality types are just built this way.

I would like the sermon for how to be meek so this week I can go and do it.

Give me the list.

And you know what?

I'll be honest, pastors love giving the list, man.

We love, and I'm guilty of using the word should.

You should do this, you should do this, you should do that.

And if you've grown up in that culture, just as a pastor here sitting before you today, I am sorry.

I'm sorry.

I mean, this misses the very heart of who God is.

To give people a list and tell them that that list of doing those things would help them access God's love.

As if behavior was a prerequisite to mercy.

How backwards is our gospel.

How much of a burden have we laid on people?

What a disgrace.

God's love is not a burden of should, and don't forget, I told you I grew up Catholic, don't forget the shouldn'ts.

Some of you ambitious people love a good list of shouldn'ts.

Give me the stuff I don't do so that I can feel better about myself and feel like God loves me.

Now I'm making light of this because I'm uncomfortable, because this is me.

I mean, pastors, like we're paid to be good, you know?

Like, at some level, we work and operate in a moral environment.

And as long as we're not doing certain things, people think we're maybe a good pastor.

What a tragedy.

What a tragedy to think that that's all we have to do as pastors.

No, the vision is so much larger.

It's not just about should, nots, and shoulds.

I'm grieved at my own life when I have linked my moral performance to my ability to access God's profound grace and mercy.

We think the two are interconnected, and we think that one is dependent on the other.

But really, God is offering us this love, and as Tim Keller has put it, like we don't behave to be loved.

We are loved and we behave differently because we experience that love.

So we hear the Proverbs and suddenly we want to do the Proverbs.

Not because God might love us, but because God has loved us.

I look at the Proverbs with joy.

God help me do these things.

I want to do these things because I know they're for my good and I know you love me.

And we hear the commands written through the New Testament, and they are not a heavy burden.

They're not a heavy burden.

I read the Proverbs and I read the commands of Scripture, which are numerous, and I don't read them as heavy burdens because I know my relationship with God is not hinging upon my potential to accomplish those commandments.

And some of you are living disrelated to God because of that.

You're missing how you should be relating with God in his countenance.

I've been studying this term burden in the New Testament.

Uh, I don't know why, I think the Lord's just kind of brought me to it.

And the word burden, it pops up a few times in Jesus' passage in um Matthew 11, where he says, My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And it's interesting, he later will denounce the Pharisees in Matthew 23, 4.

He says this.

He says, Woe to you, Pharisees, you tie up heavy burdens and you lay them on people's shoulders, and you don't even move a finger to do them yourselves.

You lay on heavy burdens.

Later in the book of Acts, uh in the New Testament, this church is getting started and there's like a theological emergency.

They're like, How do we incorporate the people who are not Jewish into this faith that is tied to the story of Israel?

Do they need to do all the ceremonial laws?

And they have this big meeting in Acts chapter 15, and the disciples say this: It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And you know what they say?

Stay away from food sacrificed to idols and the blood in the sacrifices and watch your sexual life.

Don't commit sexual immorality.

Now, that doesn't summarize all the commands of scripture, but in that moment to those churches at that time, you know what their heart was?

We don't want to lay a greater burden on you.

I think spiritual leaders often want to.

They want to put a better, bigger burden on you.

They want to say, here's all the things you should and should not do.

But is our heart, like what I was convicted of, is is my heart as a spiritual leader, like the heart in the book of Acts, that there would be no greater burden laid on anyone other than the easy burden of Jesus, knowing that their prime, their their pure relationship with Jesus is based off what he has done.

The meek understand that the burden of Jesus is light because he bears it on their behalf.

Here's John Tyson, a pastor in New York City.

He says, You don't need to unburden yourself to come to Jesus.

Actually, your burden is the very thing that qualifies you to receive his gospel because he'll ask you to lay it down.

You don't need to unburden yourself.

Jesus wants to show you mercy more than you want to receive it.

Beware of making the basis of your walk with God your moral performance.

It's stifling and you miss the very heart of God.

Notice, God in all of the beatitudes, does not bless moral behavior.

Even when he blesses righteousness, you know what he says?

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

He's like, I'm congratulating you if it's just in your desire to live rightly with me.

He's not saying, Blessed are those who are morally perfect.

He does not bless the do-gooders.

He blesses those who cannot do anything for themselves.

When you are sitting in a condition where you have nothing to offer God and you have stumbled and fallen and not done anything, the meek and gentle heart of God looks at you and says, Congratulations.

You are headed in the right direction.

That meekness is met with a congratulatory applause from God because right there you're getting to know Jesus Christ.

When you have nothing, when you bring nothing, when you are lowly, you see God's gentleness and God's kindness to you.

God has a gentle heart.

Jesus also had a humble arrival.

A humble arrival.

The third time the word prouse is used is when Jesus is arriving in his final week on Palm Sunday.

He's riding into Jerusalem, not on a war horse, but on a donkey, and Matthew cites Zechariah, an Old Testament prophet, and he says, This say to Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, prouse, meek, humble, mounted on a donkey on a colt, not on a war horse.

Your king is coming humble.

And constantly, New Testament writers were obsessed with telling us the nature in which God came to this earth.

When God arrived on earth in Christ, he didn't thunder in.

When God decided to arrive on our planet and in our time and space, he did so in a particular way.

And the New Testament pays close attention to it.

He was born in a barn, poor, in Bethlehem, a city you would never know had Jesus not been born there.

He was born in Bethlehem, not in Rome, not in Athens, not in Constantinople, not in any of the major metropolises of the ancient world.

He came in a persecuted people group, the Jewish people, under the Roman rule, not in the ruling culture.

He brought his strength under control in the humility and meekness he arrived in.

He grew up, I love Luke 2.52.

The boy Jesus grew in wisdom and knowledge in the favor of God and man.

Jesus grew up.

Jesus learned to speak, developed into personal skills, did chores, learned the alphabet, memorized scripture, learned to trade, developed relationships.

Ultimately, he subjected himself to his messianic mission and gave his life on the cross.

And it's in the story of Jesus, in the arrival of Jesus, that we realize as we see God's great love, our condition of meekness arrives.

And staring at the cross, this is why Paul put it this way in Roman Philippians 2, verse 5 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 he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself.

Philippians 2:5

I love that, becoming obedient to death, death on a cross.

Look at the back of the start of that verse.

Paul's like, have this mind, because this is yours in Christ.

When you know Christ, your brain and your mind start to change.

According to Scripture, it is possible to develop the meekness, but it's only possible through Christ.

It's yours in Jesus.

Meekness is found in Christ, in knowing him.

Why do we find meekness when we find Jesus?

Because we find out just how much strength he placed under control, just how much divinity he sequestered inside his humanity, and how much he gave so that we could receive.

When you come to know God, you come to know a God altogether unpredictable, wild, uncommonly generous, large and glorious.

You cannot control this God, and that is when you become and realize you've always been what God has congratulated you to be: meek.

In the condition of meekness.

We all struggle to receive God's love because we struggle to receive it with empty hands.

But God gives you also a profound promise.

A profound promise.

I hate to tell you I've spent all but three minutes of this message, and I haven't even told you half the verse.

But now we're in the final three minutes, and let's get into it.

It says that blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth.

You hear that?

They shall inherit the earth.

What does this mean?

I didn't realize this until many years ago studying this, that this is the only Beatitude where Jesus is not dropping an original track.

This is not his original lyric.

He had that first blessed are the poor in spirit, profound.

Blessed are those who mourn, profound.

But this is a remix.

It's uh a cover song.

He's just quoting Psalm 37.

Did you notice?

Psalm 37, verse 10.

Psalms 37:10

In just a little while, the psalmist says, the wicked will be no more, or those who are oppose God, they will be no more.

You're gonna look carefully at his place, and he will not be there.

But the meek shall inherit the land.

And here's the part he left off.

And delight themselves in abundant peace.

Delight themselves in abundant peace.

I get that the Christian life is morally good, but is it gonna last?

It's about the struggle that we see when we see people who aren't following God having a super cool life.

We go, they they look like they have it all.

Like we say money doesn't buy you happiness, but it looks kind of sweet, you know?

Greed doesn't seem like it should be good, but greedy people do seem kind of happy and powerful.

And maybe we should get some of that.

Psalm 37 is about that wrestle.

Do we trust God with his ways and his will and with his love?

That in receiving God's love, we would actually receive something in turn.

This is the struggle.

And the promise of Psalm 37 is the same promise as Jesus gives in Matthew 5.

You will inherit the land.

That is not, just so you know, metaphorical.

When the Hebrew Bible talks about the land, and when Jesus talks about the earth, he's not talking about a metaphorical place.

He's talking about the ground in which you walk.

And he's saying, one day the meek, those who are gentle, and those whose strength is under control, under the gentleness of God, one day they'll get everything you can see in this whole world.

They'll get it all.

This is new creation language.

If you're familiar with the end of the biblical narrative, where does this story go?

Where does when God returns to this earth?

It is the story of a city coming down to this earth.

And it says this in Revelation 21.

God has prepared this place, and a loud voice says this behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, your finally home.

He will dwell with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

Revelation 21, 3.

The promise given to the meek is the great hope of the Christian life.

That one day, though you possess nothing and give everything for the sake of the gospel and give everything to God, there is a day coming where everything comes back to you.

The meek will inherit the earth.

A day is coming where the world will be turned upside down and God will find his place with his people.

But the temptation for us to fight against is to believe that through our own moral performance and our own ambition or ambivalence or apathy would be that we could grab as much from the world as we could right now.

You know what Jesus says to that?

He says, when you grab as much as you can from the world, that's all you get.

You will get it.

But that's all you'll get.

So you can go for the money and enjoy it.

Because that is what you will get.

And you can go for the career, that sweet career that impresses all of us.

We are all impressed with you.

But that is what you will get.

And you can have the cultural significance and the enormous explosion of creative energy that people applaud, that is what you will get.

And for the rest of us that look around and go, I don't have much.

I actually got nothing to offer.

And we look to God and go, I don't even have anything to give to you.

God says, congratulations.

You're headed in the right direction.

One day it's coming where you'll look at those that tried to grab it all and you'll realize they're not there.

Not out of anger, not out of wrath, out of justice.

Some took and they got it.

Others released and surrendered and they will get it all.

But the meek will inherit the land.

May it fall on us to be a blessing from God.

Because I don't know about you.

There's not a lot of days I feel like I have a lot to offer.

There's not a lot of days where I feel like I have much.

But I sense through this passage a whisper that God loves me with a kind of love I am often unable to receive.

And if I open my hands today, I might one day, through his mercy, inherit much more than I could possibly imagine.

Let me pray for you.

Uh it's hard for us to receive.

We are we are generally arrogant people.

We're generally kind of proud.

We're generally resistant to hearing somebody say congratulations and patting us on the back.

And especially so when we don't feel like there's anything congratulatory about our life.

And yet, miraculously, graciously, through the power of your Holy Spirit and your word, uh, you're giving us that today.

You're that's a gift, that's a promise, that is a benediction we are receiving today.

Oh God, what I'm asking, help us receive your love.

Help us lay down the apathy, lay down the ambition, lay down the pride, and look to you with humility and contriteness.

But also look to you with a kind of strange expectation that we might receive something we could never generate on our own.

So, God, do the miracle as we're worshiping.

Holy Spirit, come.

Grant us your love in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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