The Ingredients of Happiness
Part. 3: Matt 5.5 Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Pastor Charles Price
Now if you have got your Bible and you’re open at Matthew Chapter 5, let me read to you verses 5, which are the first three of these statements that mark the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, that we call the Beatitudes. Verse 3 says:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
This word “blessed” that repeats nine times altogether - though in 8 different situations (the last one is repeated twice) – is our English translation of a word in Greek, “markariŏs” which is not easy to translate well, but it literally means to be happy. Not in the superficial sense of all our outward circumstances being nice and comfortable, but as a deep inner sense of well-being and contentedness that is there, irrespective of what our circumstances may be like. And these eight beatitudes we’re looking at – these eight ingredients of real happiness – are not eight isolated statements. There is a progression: building on the first you have the second and building on that, the third and building on that, the fourth and so on.
We looked at the first two on two previous Sundays. The first one where Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
The first step to real happiness and recognizing a sobering fact about myself, and it is: that I do not have what it takes in myself to be the person I was created to be. Human beings were created to live in dependence on God where His active presence within them would make them complete and enable them to live the way we are supposed to live. And the first step to real happiness is facing our poverty of spirit.
And then the second step is this: He says,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
When we face our poverty of spirit, we can cover it up, we can pretend it’s not like that, or we can face it honestly and mourn it, which I described last time as being repentance – not simply being sorry for what we do (that is necessary), but what we do is caused by what we are; it is a turning from what we are. And as we live in that spirit of repentance, turning from living my life my way to living my life God’s way, turning from living in independence to living in dependence on Him, the verse goes on to say, “those who mourn are comforted. Comforted, I suggested last time, by the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whose role in our lives is to replace our poverty with all the riches of Jesus Christ, replace us with the righteousness of Christ, replace our weakness with the strength of Jesus Christ, to replace our defeat with the victory of Jesus Christ. And I’ll tell you something: that is very comforting. We don’t live in our own strength; we live in the indwelling strength of the Holy Spirit.
But that leads us then to the next one, which we will talk about this morning, where in Verse 5 He says,
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
There are two things in that statement – there’s a condition and there’s a promise, as there is in all these beatitudes. The condition is: “Blessed are the meek”. What does that mean? The promise is: “They will inherit the earth”. What does that mean?
Well let’s talk first about the condition: “Blessed are the meek.” Now we tend to think of the word meek as perhaps being equivalent to weak – you know meekness is the kind of apologetic attitude, you know, “Excuse me for being alive” kind of thing. That isn’t what meekness means. In my dictionary, the word “meek” means to be humble and to be submissive. You see the inevitable logical consequence of facing our poverty and mourning our poverty is that we walk humbly with God.
Winston Churchill was once addressing the British House of Parliament and he began to talk about Clement Attlie who was the leader of the opposition. These men often sparred against each other and criticized each other and on this occasion, Churchill said, “We all know that Mr. Ackley is a very humble man.”
And everybody listening thought, “My this is unusual for Churchill to be complimentary to his opponent.”
And then in typical “Churchillian” fashion he added, “but of course we all know he has much about which to be humble.”
Well you know those who face their poverty and mourn their poverty recognize they have much about which to be humble. Jesus Himself said, “I am meek and lowly in heart”. And if we didn’t think we had enough to be humble about, then still the Lord Jesus Christ says of Himself, “I am meek and lowly.” Actually, in humility is strength. You know this is so completely opposite to natural thinking, especially in our day and age. The world highly values strength and power and ability and aggressiveness and self-confidence and self-assurance. And the more you assert yourself, the more you organize, the more you express your ability, the more you express your powers, the more you will get on, is the general consensus of life today. But here is an outstanding statement: it’s the meek who inherit the earth.
But the meaning of meekness is more than just humility. I mentioned my dictionary says, “to be meek is to be humble and to be submissive”. Submissive to whom? And in this context of course it’s submissive to Jesus Christ. Not submissive to every Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary who might like to push us around – that’s not the meekness he’s speaking of here. This is a meekness that takes strength, it’s a meekness of submission to Christ, because we recognize that the only means of living as God intends us to live is when we live our lives in submission to Christ as our Lord. And when we face our poverty of spirit and we mourn that poverty, it’s the logical thing to do because we recognize our own bankruptcy. So where do we turn? We turn in submission to Christ.
I want to talk about this for a few minutes because it is fundamental to the Christian life. It’s not fundamental however to a lot of our thinking about the Christian life. There are a lot of us who make the assumption that to talk about the lordship of Christ is to talk about some kind of fanatical version of the Christian life. Many of us come to Christ primarily because we want to be saved; we recognize that. Our interests are primarily that our sins are forgiven in order that we go to heaven when we die.
But the New Testament Gospel is so much bigger than that. In fact, you find in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is described as “Saviour” twenty-four times in total. But He is described as “Lord” over 600 times.
You know sometimes, although nobody ever states this as such, we have the idea that there are two kinds of Christian. You can take your pick as to which kind you would like to be. There is what I’ll call, first of all, the average Christian and the average Christian knows Christ as their Saviour and the benefits of that are: you have been forgiven of your sin and you have the assurance of going to heaven at the end of your life. And that’s sort of average Christianity.
And then there’s the idea that there’s a second version – you know, the sort of super-deluxe version. And the super-deluxe version does not just know Christ as Saviour; it knows Christ as Lord. It’s bringing your life under His authority, allowing Him to direct you, to guide you, to rule your life. And if you are going to be a missionary, you’d better be involved in that level of Christian living. If you’re going to be a pastor, it’s probably going to be helpful to you. If you are a bit of a fanatic, that’s the level you need. But it’s only an optional extra; it’s not really essential. But you know something? You could not be further from the truth of the New Testament when you think that way.
In Romans 14 and Verse 9, let me read you what Paul wrote there. He says,
“For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that” (if I paused there and said, ‘Fill out the rest of that sentence’, what would you say?) “Christ died and returned to life so that” (here’s the rest of the sentence) “so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
Christ died and returned to life, not simply to get you off the hook, but that He might be Lord, He might exercise His authority in your life, whether you are alive or dead – on earth or in heaven, in other words. It’s a relationship in which He is Lord.
Second Corinthians 5 Verse 15, Paul says,
“He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.”
He died for us to strike a deathblow to our self-interest in order that we might live for Him and under His authority. And although it is wonderfully true that He saves us, we cannot detach His work as Saviour from His role as Lord because Lord is who He is, saving is what He does, and what He does in our lives is possible because of who He is. And when you come to Christ you embrace who He is. Saving us is a wonderful aspect but it’s only part of His role.
Let me illustrate this. My wife, Hilary, who I’ve been married to now for twenty-five and a half years, has many skills in life. Her favourite time, she would admit to you, is not spent in the kitchen but nevertheless she is a great cook. And I’m healthy and my children are healthy because of it, and we enjoy her cooking. Supposing I was to introduce you to Hilary and you hadn’t met her before and I came to you and I said to you, “I would like you to meet my cook”? What do you think she would say? Well I’ll tell you exactly what she’d say.
She would say, “What did you say?”
I would say, “I was just introducing this person to you.”
“But who did you say I was?”
“Well, I – I- I said you were my cook.”
She would say, “I am not your cook.”
I would say, “But you cook for me, don’t you? I mean I bought you a cookbook, remember, and a cooker?”
She’d say, “Of course I cook for you, but I am not your cook; I’m your wife.”
And of course she’d be right. To call her my cook would be to insult her. She does cook – that’s marvellously true – but the day I got married, I didn’t stand in front of a group of people and say, “I take you to be my personal cook”; I said, “I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife”. And when she became my wife, do you know what I discovered? I got a cook - and a gardener - and a few other things, which I won’t tell you about. She’s my cook, if I may say that. In case some of you are a little nervous, I have been known to cook – forgotten the last time, but I have been known to cook. She cooks for me simply because she is my wife.
You know, Jesus Christ, when He comes to live within your life, it is wonderfully true He saves. This is true: He saves. (This is true that Hilary cooks.) But that isn’t His primary purpose. Christ died and returned to life that He might be Lord. Now we know He is Lord already in His place in the universe so that verse means He died and rose again that He might exercise His lordship and be submitted to as the authority in our lives, as a result. In fact if somebody comes to Jesus Christ and says, “I want the benefits of what You seem to be offering; I’d like to have my sins forgiven, I’d like to go to heaven when I die, but I do not want You to tell me what to do in the meantime. I do not want You to rule my life here and now.” Do you know how much that person receives from Christ? I’ll tell you. The answer is: nothing. How do I know that? Because people tried it in the Bible - let me give you one example. In Mark Chapter 10 – if you’ve got a Bible just turn to Mark 10 and we have a story here of a man who came to Jesus. We call him the rich young ruler and in Verse 17 (Mark doesn’t tell us he was a ruler, but Luke tells us that) but in Mark 10:17 it says,
“ As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Let me pause there a moment. Jesus was leaving Jericho and suddenly this man comes running up to this crowd who are milling around Jesus, probably elbowed a few in the ribs, broke his way through the crowd, fell on his knees in front of Him and asked the most brilliant question: “Good master, what must I do to receive eternal life?”
If you and I were in the crowd that day we’d say, “Boy, that guy is keen; he’s enthusiastic.”
Jesus said to him,
“ ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
I haven’t time to talk about that statement, though I think it is a very, very important statement to understand.
“ ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
And then He said this:
“ ‘You know the commandments: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.”
And before He had finished the list, the man interrupted Him,
“ ‘Teacher,’ he declared, ‘all these I have kept since I was a boy.’”
Well, to be honest, I don’t believe him - I don’t think Jesus did – but that’s what he said. And then,
“Jesus looked at him and loved him.”
I love the fact that Mark states that.
“He looked at him and loved him. ‘One think you lack,’ he said, ‘Go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’
“At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
I would think this is the way not to do personal evangelism, wouldn’t you think? I don’t know any method of personal evangelism that teaches you to do it the way Jesus did it, which means we should question not Jesus, but sometimes what we’re telling people. Why did He say to this man, “One thing you lack? You’re a rich man; go and sell your possessions, give them to the poor, then come and follow Me?” Why did He say that? Is it because it’s wrong to be rich? And the answer to that question is: No. The Bible never says it’s wrong to be rich. It does warn that it’s dangerous sometimes to be rich. So why did Jesus pick on this man’s money? Well I’ll tell you why. In Matthew 6:24 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters for he’ll love the one and hate the other. You cannot serve God and money (the International Version puts it), mammon (some translations put it), materialism (others have put it). What He was saying there was this: that you cannot serve two masters – you’ll love one, hate the other – you cannot serve God or money. And Jesus was diagnosing that this man already had a god in his life; he already had a master in his life.
And He was saying in effect, “If you want eternal life, understand that the only terms is that you surrender your life to Me, but you’ve already got a master in your life. So get rid of your money, then come and follow Me.” And just to prove that the diagnosis of Jesus was correct – that His money was His master - he went away without the eternal life he came asking for. “He went away”, it says, “sadly”, because he was very rich.
And what did Jesus do? Did He run after him and say, “Excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that. Just come back a moment. Let’s um, let’s talk about this; let’s negotiate something, shall we? Um, let me ask you a few questions. Would you like to go to heaven when you die? You would? Okay, good. What about your sins? Would you like Me to forgive your sins? You haven’t got many you say; you’ve been keeping all the commandments. You must have a few – come on, be honest. You have? Okay. You want Me to forgive those? That’s fine, no problem. Now listen, um, you’re a rich man aren’t you? I’ve got some ideas for what we can do with your money. Uh, would you like My will or yours? You can handle that – you sure? Okay. I’ll leave that out. Uh, you’re single, is that right? Would you like Me to guide you and decide who you should marry? I beg your pardon? What’s her name, do you say? Well, you know, she may not have a name because maybe I want you to stay single. What I want to know though is, do you want My will or yours? You can handle that? Okay, fine. And if you get stuck, you can always come and pray later but we’ll leave that out for the moment. Now it looks like all you really want is to have your sins forgiven and go to heaven when you die. That is all you want? Okay. Well, I need to warn you that it won’t be very satisfying; you might need to come back and get rededicated later on or something like that. But in the meantime, let’s deal with those two that you want and at least if you fall off your camel you’ll know where you’re going, but, uh, you’re going to have to come back for something more satisfying later.”
Is that what Jesus said to him? Of course it wasn’t, course it wasn’t. Is that what you say to people? You see Jesus breaks all the rules of personal evangelism. Do you know why? Because He always told the truth – always told the truth. If you want to be a Christian, if you want eternal life, it’s Jesus Christ moving in as Lord into your life. Now, that doesn’t mean, of course, that everything goes well and smoothly and you somehow live a perfectly obedient life. You don’t. It’s a battle all your life. It’s a disposition.
I had a letter only this morning (it was on my desk) from a lady who is 85 years of age and she said in the course of her letter, “I did at least hope that the older I got, the easier the Christian life would become, but I’m in as much battle with the Devil now as I’ve ever been in my life.” And that is true. And this is a lady who, from the way she writes, loves Him with all her heart, is submitted to Him.
It doesn’t mean you become in any way perfect; it’s a disposition. It’s like this: when I got married (if I can use Hilary again as an illustration – she was in the first service so she heard it all already and I’m going to India tonight so I’m off the hook), but when I got married I stood in front of a group of people and I was asked to say these words, “Forsaking all others, I take you only unto me”. In other words, what those words mean is, “I will never again look at a girl the way I look at you; I’ll never again develop a relationship with a girl that I have with you. Forsaking all others, I take you only unto me. You will have an exclusive place in my life.” And I’ve lived by that for more than 25 years.
But that didn’t make me a perfect husband overnight. (That took a month I think if I remember.) Of course it doesn’t and I’m not a perfect one now; in fact I’m a rotten one. But although there are many times I need to say, “Hilary, I’m sorry”, it’s a disposition that says, “You have this exclusive place in my life.”
And it’s not when you surrender to Christ that suddenly you go out and live about six - you float six feet above the ground and everything is perfect; of course not. You are in the thick of battle and there are many, many times you need to come back and say, “God, I’m sorry.” But your disposition is: there is nobody I love more than Jesus and there’s nobody I want to please more than Jesus and there’s nobody I want to serve more than Jesus.
It may mean of course that life becomes a little uncomfortable sometimes. I love what C.S. Lewis wrote when he said that, six months after becoming a Christian, he said, “God began to change my life around and adjust everything.” He said it was like having the builders in your house.
“Well I thought that was okay because a bit of paint here was good, or a little repair over here was good, correcting some damage back there was right, maybe we can enlarge a window or two. Generally they will make the house better than it was. But instead”, he said, “it was like having these builders in the house and they were knocking down walls and they were taking the whole staircase down and putting it somewhere else, and they were putting in new light fittings and the place was like chaos.” And Lewis says, “I said to God: ‘God what are You doing in my life?’
And God said, “Don’t you know, I’m trying to change your little shack into a palace.”
You know all the things we cling to are often the little shack and yes, when He changes your little shack into a palace, there’s pain sometimes, there’s inconvenience sometimes, there’s a revolution going on sometimes. And that’s where the lordship of Christ can either be an enormous threat to you or it can be a liberating promise to you. And it’s a liberating promise that I’m talking about – when you gladly, willingly say, “Because I recognize my poverty of spirit and because I live in that spirit of mourning that poverty, there is no other logical thing to do but to submit myself to Christ to walk meekly.” And do you know what happens? Here’s the promise: “They will inherit the earth.” – very interesting one. It does not say, “they will inherit heaven”, though they will, but that isn’t the point of it. “They will inherit the earth”. It’s about living with meaning on earth.
You know Adam was created to live on earth. We were created initially for earth. And earth is not just a waiting room for heaven, where we sit around keeping ourselves out of mischief until eventually we get to heaven. We were created that here on earth we discover meaning and purpose. We will at the end of this life of course move on as He has promised us, to enjoy His presence in heaven. But Scripture doesn’t say a lot about that. It’s about how God is getting to work here and now, on earth, on the way to heaven.
I love the verse in Psalm 139: 15 and 16 where David wrote,
“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
Listen to this:
“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Beautiful statement! Before I was ever born, not only did God know me, but using picture language, he says, “The days ordained for me were written in Your book”. When I was born my parents might have been taken by surprise that I was on the way, but God was not taken by surprise. He has a book, metaphorically speaking, with your name on it.
Now, by nature, because we have been born in sin, we take our own course. But the purpose of the Gospel is to restore us to the original purpose for which He created us, by coming back in relationship with God and in surrender to God.
Now I know this is a huge subject and I can only touch on a little bit of it for a few moments this morning. There are many facets of this that on other occasions I hope we will have opportunity to talk about.
But I want to say this: that many folks that I meet are frightened of the will of God in their lives. I have worked a lot with young people, worked with students for many, many years and I suppose a very frequent conversation would be about the fact that if I surrender my life to Christ, He’s probably going to spoil it for me. Do you ever have that kind of feeling? You know, if I say, “God You can show me what job You want me to do” and as I say, I’ve talked to college age kids a lot about these things. And they are at the stage in life when they are saying, “If I say, ‘God what do you want me to do’, He’ll probably say, “what is the last thing in the world you’d like to be – a dentist?” I mean if you’re a dentist, forgive me for mentioning this, but it’s the last thing in the world I’d like to be and I’m glad you folks exist but I don’t understand you, that’s for sure – you know, all day looking down people’s throats, breathing their recycled breath, you know having conversations like this. But we feel if I say to God, “That’s the last thing I want to be”, God will say, ‘Do you know what I want you to be? Be a dentist.’
Or we fear if we say, “Lord, I’d love to marry a girl sometime; would you show me, guide me to somebody You want me to marry, we’re scared of what He’ll do.
He’ll say, “Good, I’ve been waiting for a volunteer; I’ve got one over here.” You get an idea of what she’s like, you know, she’s a redhead with no hair – just a redhead. She’s got long black hair all the way down her back; it’s just not on her head – it’s just all the way down her back. She’s got amazing teeth; she could eat an apple through a tennis racquet. The only beautiful thing about her are her eyes – her eyes are beautiful, especially the green one. And we sort of get the feeling, if I say, “Lord, You guide me”, He’ll probably go and do something like that.
Do you know when we have that kind of fear – and it’s a very real fear that many people have about God – it’s because they don’t know God well enough. Let me read you something that Paul wrote in Romans 12: 1,2. I will read you part of Verse 1 and part of Verse 2. He says,
“I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.”
That’s the meek aspect. “Present your body as a sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” Then he says later in Verse 2:
“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
That’s the inheriting the earth bit. He says, “If you present your bodies a living sacrifice to God” and notice by the way, “holy and pleasing to God, - “then you will approve and test what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.”
If you present your body to God, it will be pleasing to Him and He will work out His will in you and it will be pleasing to you. There’s a pleasing on both sides there – did you notice that? You present your body a living sacrifice, pleasing to God – that pleases Him; that thrills Him. And He’ll work out His plan in your life and that’ll please you.
Now notice, he says, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice”, etc…then you are going to test and approve what’s God’s will. Some of us would like a sort of thirty-day trial. “Lord, please guide me for the next 6 months and let’s see what happens. And at the end of six months, if I am going to give myself wholly to You, then, you know, I’ll let You know. But let’s try it for a while.”
No, no, you never discover the will of God until you totally abandon to the will of God. That’s why Jesus said in John 7:17, “He whose will is to do my will, will know that the teaching is from God.”
It’s as you do that you know. You know the will of God when you do it. Does that sound like putting the cart before the horse? No it’s not. As you obey, God guides us. And by the way, 90% of the will of God is in this book. That’s why we need to know this book. It doesn’t tell you what job to do, but by the Holy Spirit He will guide you. But the way in which you live your life, God has revealed that to us as His will already.
And actually God has undertaken to do the guiding; we don’t have to get ourselves guided. Proverbs 3:6 says,
“In all your ways, acknowledge Him; He will direct your paths.”
I realized this about 15 years ago when I stopped praying for God to guide me about 15 years ago and I’ve never been more relaxed than I have these last 15 years. It’s His job to put you in the right place, not to explain it to you. He’ll put you in the right place at the right time with the right people for the right purpose. And as you acknowledge Him in all your ways – it’s a disposition – you get up in the morning so to speak and your attitude is, “Lord, I’m available to You today. Thank you for being my Lord, for being my Saviour, for indwelling me by Your Holy Spirit. I can get on with life and I am going to trust You and just get on with life.”
And you’ll see in retrospect much better than in prospect, the way in which God guides you. You’ll look back and say, “Wow, that was God; I can see it now.” You can’t always; you don’t have to see it. We walk by faith, not by sight. But try and work it out in advance? No, just obey and trust Him. And one important way He does guide us is that He gives us the desires in our hearts that He wants us to have. There’s that great verse in Psalm 37:4:
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Now there’s a wrong way and right way to read that verse. The wrong way is this: if you delight yourself in God, He’ll give you everything you want. That’s the wrong way to read that verse.
The right way to read that verse is: If you delight yourself in the Lord, the desires of your heart will be God-given desires. He puts the right desire within your heart and you begin to follow your desires. That’s why the will of God and what you want is often the same thing. You know, again, this is a very frequent question: is this my will or is it God’s will? I have been asked that question. Have asked it once, a thousand, ten thousand times: is it my will or God’s will? And I always say, “Have you ever thought it might be both?” It is your will, but why is it your will? Because it is Gods will; because you delight yourself in Him, He gives you the desires – He put the desires in your heart.
I’d often say to young people, “What you will find is a remarkable thing, is that when you come to marry somebody, you’ll discover you’ll actually love that person. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?” Why? Because, how do you know this is the person to marry? One of the reasons is God puts in your heart a love and a desire for that person. I’ve never heard of anybody saying – you know a guy saying to a girl, “Listen, I don’t like you very much I’m afraid. I don’t like the way you look, I don’t like the way you act, don’t like the way you dress, don’t like the smell of your breath, but God has told me that we should get married.”
And she says, “Oh that’s interesting; I don’t like you either but I also feel that God wants us to get married.”
The amazing thing is if God wants you to marry, you’ll love each other. Why - because He works in your desires. He works in us, Philippians 2:12 says, “to will and to act according to His good purpose.” There’s the will first. He puts the will, the desire, the appetites for what is right in your heart. And those are both general, as we’ll see next week – or next time – when we talk about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, but specific as well, as He guides you in your life and gives you direction.
And that’s why this is not a threat; it’s a liberating promise. To many people it’s a threat; it’s a kind of catch. “Well, you know, I’ve got the benefit of going to heaven, I want my sins forgiven; oh boy, I knew there would be a catch somewhere.” The catch is you’ve got to surrender your life to Christ.
It’s not the catch; it’s what it’s all about, in order that life on earth might be lived with fulfillment and satisfaction, with a sense of destiny because you are being guided by an eternal God in a time-bound world and your life is far more significant than you will ever know, as God works out His purpose within your life.
I talked to somebody this morning whose mother died two weeks ago and he went to the funeral away out of the city, in fact out of the country. I said, “How was the funeral?”
He said, “You know, it was the most amazing time.” He said, “My mother used to leave her back door open and kids who lived in our area used to come into the house – some of them very, very poor kids and there would always be an extra place laid for dinner and somebody would be there to eat.”
I said, “Was that when you were a kid?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I grew up with that. But after I left home. And he said, “We had dozens of these now adult people who were kids who stood up in the funeral and said, “That lady changed my life. I couldn’t talk to my mom and dad but I could go to her door, didn’t have to knock on the door; it was always open, talk to her. She fed me when there was no food in my house. She cared for me.”
He told me that this morning. His eyes welled up and he said, “You know, I just didn’t know it was as significant as it was.”
I said, “Was she a Christian lady?”
He said, “You bet she was.”
Well I knew before I asked him the question (but I’m a bit dumb) because of the kind of person he described her as being.
And as you say every day, “Lord, my life is not my own. What you have given to me is on trust that I might live it under Your authority, under Your lordship and the enabling of Your Holy Spirit. I’m going to go out into the world and trust You to work out Your purpose for good.”
I love those three words in Romans 12: then you’ll discover this world to be good, pleasing and perfect. If it’s good, how can you improve on it? If it’s pleasing, what more would you want? If it’s perfect, one day you will look back with the hindsight of eternity, when we’re in heaven – we won’t know the whole story till then – we’ll see all the things in our lives that we didn’t enjoy, the things that were difficult, the things that were tough and we’ll see how God, as we have allowed Him into those areas of our lives, has used them in ways we would never have known. And I think we’ll look into His face and have only one thing to say to Him: we’ll say, “Thank You. I didn’t enjoy it in 2001 when it was painful, when I couldn’t see around the corner. But now I see the picture.” And so the thing to do now, when you can’t see the whole picture is still to say, “Thank You”, and to trust Him.
But supposing you are not inheriting the earth, life on earth – it’s not finding its purpose and fulfillment? I’ll tell you why. Because you are not meek, you’re not humbly submissive to Christ as Lord.
If you are not meek, I’ll tell you why. Go back a step; it’s because you’re not mourning your position and allowing the Comforter to get to work in your heart.
If you’re not mourning your condition, I’ll tell you why: because you are not aware of your poverty of spirit. Go back another link. You still think you’ve got what it takes; you’ve not come to the point of recognizing your own bankruptcy. And if you’re not aware of your poverty of spirit, I’ll tell you something about you, that you probably already know, and certainly your wife or husband and kids might know, or your neighbors and friends or your parents might know, and it’s simply this: you’re not happy.
These are the ingredients of happiness. Blessed – happy – are those who are poor in spirit, who then mourn their condition, allow the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to replace what they are with who He is, and then meekly submit to Christ as Lord, because they inherit the earth; these are the ones who live everyday with a sense of purpose and a sense of destiny.
How do you know when this is true in your life? Well, we’ll find out next time, because there are some appetites that begin to bubble up. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,” (whatever that means), “for they will be filled” – satisfied. You don’t choose to hunger and thirst; it just happens as a natural consequence. And when you are living in this relationship with Christ, you don’t have to get a big stick to say, “Now come on, submit.” No, no. The greatest longings of your heart is to know God in all His holiness, righteousness, (which is what that is) and for that righteousness to then be displayed in us, as He lives in us. But we’ll look at that next time.
But maybe there are some of us here this morning and you wonder why it is – and maybe some of you watching on television – you wonder why it is that your life really, even though you would say you have been a Christian for many years, has never been satisfying. Maybe you are not yet a Christian at all. But God the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you as only He can. I can speak to the human ear – the natural mind does not receive the things that come from God – the Spirit reveals them. And some of us in this building this morning and some of you watching on television: there’s been a revelation in your heart and you say, “Oh, I’ve got it, I can see it.” You need to come and surrender to Christ. It’s then a daily disposition. There has to be a beginning. When I got married, there was a beginning. I had to say, “I will.”
“Will you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
I said, “I will.” That was the moment in time that was the beginning. But that isn’t marriage. Marriage is everyday, living in relationship with my wife, my children, providing for them, caring for them, loving them, listening to them, enjoying them.
So it is with God. There is a moment of beginning. And you can go wrong after the beginning. You can go off track. You can stop developing the relationship. But you say, “Lord, I come to You in full surrender”, and then every day enjoy Him, trust Him, believe Him, live for Him. And you’ll discover you’ll inherit the earth.
I’m going to pray and I’m going to lead you in a prayer. There may be some of you who feel today you need to pray a prayer of surrender. Maybe you’ve never become a Christian. Maybe you have and maybe over the years something has grown cold and distant. These aren’t special words but they may help you and I’m going to ask you to pray these with me from your heart to God.
Lord, I thank You so much that You have planned for my life. You have not left me here to roam under my own steam. But Your purpose is to live within me, to guide me and direct me. I acknowledge I’ve been living separate from You. I’ve been following my own course; I’ve been doing my own thing. I confess that to You, I repent of that. And I thank You, having died for me, You can cleanse me of all my sin and having risen again, You are able to indwell me as my Lord. Cleanse me and reign in me I pray. And I’ll thank You every day as You work out Your purpose and bless other people through me. Thank You for hearing my prayer. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Part. 3: Matt 5.5 Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Pastor Charles Price
Now if you have got your Bible and you’re open at Matthew Chapter 5, let me read to you verses 5, which are the first three of these statements that mark the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, that we call the Beatitudes. Verse 3 says:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
This word “blessed” that repeats nine times altogether - though in 8 different situations (the last one is repeated twice) – is our English translation of a word in Greek, “markariŏs” which is not easy to translate well, but it literally means to be happy. Not in the superficial sense of all our outward circumstances being nice and comfortable, but as a deep inner sense of well-being and contentedness that is there, irrespective of what our circumstances may be like. And these eight beatitudes we’re looking at – these eight ingredients of real happiness – are not eight isolated statements. There is a progression: building on the first you have the second and building on that, the third and building on that, the fourth and so on.
We looked at the first two on two previous Sundays. The first one where Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
The first step to real happiness and recognizing a sobering fact about myself, and it is: that I do not have what it takes in myself to be the person I was created to be. Human beings were created to live in dependence on God where His active presence within them would make them complete and enable them to live the way we are supposed to live. And the first step to real happiness is facing our poverty of spirit.
And then the second step is this: He says,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
When we face our poverty of spirit, we can cover it up, we can pretend it’s not like that, or we can face it honestly and mourn it, which I described last time as being repentance – not simply being sorry for what we do (that is necessary), but what we do is caused by what we are; it is a turning from what we are. And as we live in that spirit of repentance, turning from living my life my way to living my life God’s way, turning from living in independence to living in dependence on Him, the verse goes on to say, “those who mourn are comforted. Comforted, I suggested last time, by the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whose role in our lives is to replace our poverty with all the riches of Jesus Christ, replace us with the righteousness of Christ, replace our weakness with the strength of Jesus Christ, to replace our defeat with the victory of Jesus Christ. And I’ll tell you something: that is very comforting. We don’t live in our own strength; we live in the indwelling strength of the Holy Spirit.
But that leads us then to the next one, which we will talk about this morning, where in Verse 5 He says,
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
There are two things in that statement – there’s a condition and there’s a promise, as there is in all these beatitudes. The condition is: “Blessed are the meek”. What does that mean? The promise is: “They will inherit the earth”. What does that mean?
Well let’s talk first about the condition: “Blessed are the meek.” Now we tend to think of the word meek as perhaps being equivalent to weak – you know meekness is the kind of apologetic attitude, you know, “Excuse me for being alive” kind of thing. That isn’t what meekness means. In my dictionary, the word “meek” means to be humble and to be submissive. You see the inevitable logical consequence of facing our poverty and mourning our poverty is that we walk humbly with God.
Winston Churchill was once addressing the British House of Parliament and he began to talk about Clement Attlie who was the leader of the opposition. These men often sparred against each other and criticized each other and on this occasion, Churchill said, “We all know that Mr. Ackley is a very humble man.”
And everybody listening thought, “My this is unusual for Churchill to be complimentary to his opponent.”
And then in typical “Churchillian” fashion he added, “but of course we all know he has much about which to be humble.”
Well you know those who face their poverty and mourn their poverty recognize they have much about which to be humble. Jesus Himself said, “I am meek and lowly in heart”. And if we didn’t think we had enough to be humble about, then still the Lord Jesus Christ says of Himself, “I am meek and lowly.” Actually, in humility is strength. You know this is so completely opposite to natural thinking, especially in our day and age. The world highly values strength and power and ability and aggressiveness and self-confidence and self-assurance. And the more you assert yourself, the more you organize, the more you express your ability, the more you express your powers, the more you will get on, is the general consensus of life today. But here is an outstanding statement: it’s the meek who inherit the earth.
But the meaning of meekness is more than just humility. I mentioned my dictionary says, “to be meek is to be humble and to be submissive”. Submissive to whom? And in this context of course it’s submissive to Jesus Christ. Not submissive to every Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary who might like to push us around – that’s not the meekness he’s speaking of here. This is a meekness that takes strength, it’s a meekness of submission to Christ, because we recognize that the only means of living as God intends us to live is when we live our lives in submission to Christ as our Lord. And when we face our poverty of spirit and we mourn that poverty, it’s the logical thing to do because we recognize our own bankruptcy. So where do we turn? We turn in submission to Christ.
I want to talk about this for a few minutes because it is fundamental to the Christian life. It’s not fundamental however to a lot of our thinking about the Christian life. There are a lot of us who make the assumption that to talk about the lordship of Christ is to talk about some kind of fanatical version of the Christian life. Many of us come to Christ primarily because we want to be saved; we recognize that. Our interests are primarily that our sins are forgiven in order that we go to heaven when we die.
But the New Testament Gospel is so much bigger than that. In fact, you find in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is described as “Saviour” twenty-four times in total. But He is described as “Lord” over 600 times.
You know sometimes, although nobody ever states this as such, we have the idea that there are two kinds of Christian. You can take your pick as to which kind you would like to be. There is what I’ll call, first of all, the average Christian and the average Christian knows Christ as their Saviour and the benefits of that are: you have been forgiven of your sin and you have the assurance of going to heaven at the end of your life. And that’s sort of average Christianity.
And then there’s the idea that there’s a second version – you know, the sort of super-deluxe version. And the super-deluxe version does not just know Christ as Saviour; it knows Christ as Lord. It’s bringing your life under His authority, allowing Him to direct you, to guide you, to rule your life. And if you are going to be a missionary, you’d better be involved in that level of Christian living. If you’re going to be a pastor, it’s probably going to be helpful to you. If you are a bit of a fanatic, that’s the level you need. But it’s only an optional extra; it’s not really essential. But you know something? You could not be further from the truth of the New Testament when you think that way.
In Romans 14 and Verse 9, let me read you what Paul wrote there. He says,
“For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that” (if I paused there and said, ‘Fill out the rest of that sentence’, what would you say?) “Christ died and returned to life so that” (here’s the rest of the sentence) “so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
Christ died and returned to life, not simply to get you off the hook, but that He might be Lord, He might exercise His authority in your life, whether you are alive or dead – on earth or in heaven, in other words. It’s a relationship in which He is Lord.
Second Corinthians 5 Verse 15, Paul says,
“He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.”
He died for us to strike a deathblow to our self-interest in order that we might live for Him and under His authority. And although it is wonderfully true that He saves us, we cannot detach His work as Saviour from His role as Lord because Lord is who He is, saving is what He does, and what He does in our lives is possible because of who He is. And when you come to Christ you embrace who He is. Saving us is a wonderful aspect but it’s only part of His role.
Let me illustrate this. My wife, Hilary, who I’ve been married to now for twenty-five and a half years, has many skills in life. Her favourite time, she would admit to you, is not spent in the kitchen but nevertheless she is a great cook. And I’m healthy and my children are healthy because of it, and we enjoy her cooking. Supposing I was to introduce you to Hilary and you hadn’t met her before and I came to you and I said to you, “I would like you to meet my cook”? What do you think she would say? Well I’ll tell you exactly what she’d say.
She would say, “What did you say?”
I would say, “I was just introducing this person to you.”
“But who did you say I was?”
“Well, I – I- I said you were my cook.”
She would say, “I am not your cook.”
I would say, “But you cook for me, don’t you? I mean I bought you a cookbook, remember, and a cooker?”
She’d say, “Of course I cook for you, but I am not your cook; I’m your wife.”
And of course she’d be right. To call her my cook would be to insult her. She does cook – that’s marvellously true – but the day I got married, I didn’t stand in front of a group of people and say, “I take you to be my personal cook”; I said, “I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife”. And when she became my wife, do you know what I discovered? I got a cook - and a gardener - and a few other things, which I won’t tell you about. She’s my cook, if I may say that. In case some of you are a little nervous, I have been known to cook – forgotten the last time, but I have been known to cook. She cooks for me simply because she is my wife.
You know, Jesus Christ, when He comes to live within your life, it is wonderfully true He saves. This is true: He saves. (This is true that Hilary cooks.) But that isn’t His primary purpose. Christ died and returned to life that He might be Lord. Now we know He is Lord already in His place in the universe so that verse means He died and rose again that He might exercise His lordship and be submitted to as the authority in our lives, as a result. In fact if somebody comes to Jesus Christ and says, “I want the benefits of what You seem to be offering; I’d like to have my sins forgiven, I’d like to go to heaven when I die, but I do not want You to tell me what to do in the meantime. I do not want You to rule my life here and now.” Do you know how much that person receives from Christ? I’ll tell you. The answer is: nothing. How do I know that? Because people tried it in the Bible - let me give you one example. In Mark Chapter 10 – if you’ve got a Bible just turn to Mark 10 and we have a story here of a man who came to Jesus. We call him the rich young ruler and in Verse 17 (Mark doesn’t tell us he was a ruler, but Luke tells us that) but in Mark 10:17 it says,
“ As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Let me pause there a moment. Jesus was leaving Jericho and suddenly this man comes running up to this crowd who are milling around Jesus, probably elbowed a few in the ribs, broke his way through the crowd, fell on his knees in front of Him and asked the most brilliant question: “Good master, what must I do to receive eternal life?”
If you and I were in the crowd that day we’d say, “Boy, that guy is keen; he’s enthusiastic.”
Jesus said to him,
“ ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
I haven’t time to talk about that statement, though I think it is a very, very important statement to understand.
“ ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
And then He said this:
“ ‘You know the commandments: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.”
And before He had finished the list, the man interrupted Him,
“ ‘Teacher,’ he declared, ‘all these I have kept since I was a boy.’”
Well, to be honest, I don’t believe him - I don’t think Jesus did – but that’s what he said. And then,
“Jesus looked at him and loved him.”
I love the fact that Mark states that.
“He looked at him and loved him. ‘One think you lack,’ he said, ‘Go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’
“At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
I would think this is the way not to do personal evangelism, wouldn’t you think? I don’t know any method of personal evangelism that teaches you to do it the way Jesus did it, which means we should question not Jesus, but sometimes what we’re telling people. Why did He say to this man, “One thing you lack? You’re a rich man; go and sell your possessions, give them to the poor, then come and follow Me?” Why did He say that? Is it because it’s wrong to be rich? And the answer to that question is: No. The Bible never says it’s wrong to be rich. It does warn that it’s dangerous sometimes to be rich. So why did Jesus pick on this man’s money? Well I’ll tell you why. In Matthew 6:24 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters for he’ll love the one and hate the other. You cannot serve God and money (the International Version puts it), mammon (some translations put it), materialism (others have put it). What He was saying there was this: that you cannot serve two masters – you’ll love one, hate the other – you cannot serve God or money. And Jesus was diagnosing that this man already had a god in his life; he already had a master in his life.
And He was saying in effect, “If you want eternal life, understand that the only terms is that you surrender your life to Me, but you’ve already got a master in your life. So get rid of your money, then come and follow Me.” And just to prove that the diagnosis of Jesus was correct – that His money was His master - he went away without the eternal life he came asking for. “He went away”, it says, “sadly”, because he was very rich.
And what did Jesus do? Did He run after him and say, “Excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that. Just come back a moment. Let’s um, let’s talk about this; let’s negotiate something, shall we? Um, let me ask you a few questions. Would you like to go to heaven when you die? You would? Okay, good. What about your sins? Would you like Me to forgive your sins? You haven’t got many you say; you’ve been keeping all the commandments. You must have a few – come on, be honest. You have? Okay. You want Me to forgive those? That’s fine, no problem. Now listen, um, you’re a rich man aren’t you? I’ve got some ideas for what we can do with your money. Uh, would you like My will or yours? You can handle that – you sure? Okay. I’ll leave that out. Uh, you’re single, is that right? Would you like Me to guide you and decide who you should marry? I beg your pardon? What’s her name, do you say? Well, you know, she may not have a name because maybe I want you to stay single. What I want to know though is, do you want My will or yours? You can handle that? Okay, fine. And if you get stuck, you can always come and pray later but we’ll leave that out for the moment. Now it looks like all you really want is to have your sins forgiven and go to heaven when you die. That is all you want? Okay. Well, I need to warn you that it won’t be very satisfying; you might need to come back and get rededicated later on or something like that. But in the meantime, let’s deal with those two that you want and at least if you fall off your camel you’ll know where you’re going, but, uh, you’re going to have to come back for something more satisfying later.”
Is that what Jesus said to him? Of course it wasn’t, course it wasn’t. Is that what you say to people? You see Jesus breaks all the rules of personal evangelism. Do you know why? Because He always told the truth – always told the truth. If you want to be a Christian, if you want eternal life, it’s Jesus Christ moving in as Lord into your life. Now, that doesn’t mean, of course, that everything goes well and smoothly and you somehow live a perfectly obedient life. You don’t. It’s a battle all your life. It’s a disposition.
I had a letter only this morning (it was on my desk) from a lady who is 85 years of age and she said in the course of her letter, “I did at least hope that the older I got, the easier the Christian life would become, but I’m in as much battle with the Devil now as I’ve ever been in my life.” And that is true. And this is a lady who, from the way she writes, loves Him with all her heart, is submitted to Him.
It doesn’t mean you become in any way perfect; it’s a disposition. It’s like this: when I got married (if I can use Hilary again as an illustration – she was in the first service so she heard it all already and I’m going to India tonight so I’m off the hook), but when I got married I stood in front of a group of people and I was asked to say these words, “Forsaking all others, I take you only unto me”. In other words, what those words mean is, “I will never again look at a girl the way I look at you; I’ll never again develop a relationship with a girl that I have with you. Forsaking all others, I take you only unto me. You will have an exclusive place in my life.” And I’ve lived by that for more than 25 years.
But that didn’t make me a perfect husband overnight. (That took a month I think if I remember.) Of course it doesn’t and I’m not a perfect one now; in fact I’m a rotten one. But although there are many times I need to say, “Hilary, I’m sorry”, it’s a disposition that says, “You have this exclusive place in my life.”
And it’s not when you surrender to Christ that suddenly you go out and live about six - you float six feet above the ground and everything is perfect; of course not. You are in the thick of battle and there are many, many times you need to come back and say, “God, I’m sorry.” But your disposition is: there is nobody I love more than Jesus and there’s nobody I want to please more than Jesus and there’s nobody I want to serve more than Jesus.
It may mean of course that life becomes a little uncomfortable sometimes. I love what C.S. Lewis wrote when he said that, six months after becoming a Christian, he said, “God began to change my life around and adjust everything.” He said it was like having the builders in your house.
“Well I thought that was okay because a bit of paint here was good, or a little repair over here was good, correcting some damage back there was right, maybe we can enlarge a window or two. Generally they will make the house better than it was. But instead”, he said, “it was like having these builders in the house and they were knocking down walls and they were taking the whole staircase down and putting it somewhere else, and they were putting in new light fittings and the place was like chaos.” And Lewis says, “I said to God: ‘God what are You doing in my life?’
And God said, “Don’t you know, I’m trying to change your little shack into a palace.”
You know all the things we cling to are often the little shack and yes, when He changes your little shack into a palace, there’s pain sometimes, there’s inconvenience sometimes, there’s a revolution going on sometimes. And that’s where the lordship of Christ can either be an enormous threat to you or it can be a liberating promise to you. And it’s a liberating promise that I’m talking about – when you gladly, willingly say, “Because I recognize my poverty of spirit and because I live in that spirit of mourning that poverty, there is no other logical thing to do but to submit myself to Christ to walk meekly.” And do you know what happens? Here’s the promise: “They will inherit the earth.” – very interesting one. It does not say, “they will inherit heaven”, though they will, but that isn’t the point of it. “They will inherit the earth”. It’s about living with meaning on earth.
You know Adam was created to live on earth. We were created initially for earth. And earth is not just a waiting room for heaven, where we sit around keeping ourselves out of mischief until eventually we get to heaven. We were created that here on earth we discover meaning and purpose. We will at the end of this life of course move on as He has promised us, to enjoy His presence in heaven. But Scripture doesn’t say a lot about that. It’s about how God is getting to work here and now, on earth, on the way to heaven.
I love the verse in Psalm 139: 15 and 16 where David wrote,
“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
Listen to this:
“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Beautiful statement! Before I was ever born, not only did God know me, but using picture language, he says, “The days ordained for me were written in Your book”. When I was born my parents might have been taken by surprise that I was on the way, but God was not taken by surprise. He has a book, metaphorically speaking, with your name on it.
Now, by nature, because we have been born in sin, we take our own course. But the purpose of the Gospel is to restore us to the original purpose for which He created us, by coming back in relationship with God and in surrender to God.
Now I know this is a huge subject and I can only touch on a little bit of it for a few moments this morning. There are many facets of this that on other occasions I hope we will have opportunity to talk about.
But I want to say this: that many folks that I meet are frightened of the will of God in their lives. I have worked a lot with young people, worked with students for many, many years and I suppose a very frequent conversation would be about the fact that if I surrender my life to Christ, He’s probably going to spoil it for me. Do you ever have that kind of feeling? You know, if I say, “God You can show me what job You want me to do” and as I say, I’ve talked to college age kids a lot about these things. And they are at the stage in life when they are saying, “If I say, ‘God what do you want me to do’, He’ll probably say, “what is the last thing in the world you’d like to be – a dentist?” I mean if you’re a dentist, forgive me for mentioning this, but it’s the last thing in the world I’d like to be and I’m glad you folks exist but I don’t understand you, that’s for sure – you know, all day looking down people’s throats, breathing their recycled breath, you know having conversations like this. But we feel if I say to God, “That’s the last thing I want to be”, God will say, ‘Do you know what I want you to be? Be a dentist.’
Or we fear if we say, “Lord, I’d love to marry a girl sometime; would you show me, guide me to somebody You want me to marry, we’re scared of what He’ll do.
He’ll say, “Good, I’ve been waiting for a volunteer; I’ve got one over here.” You get an idea of what she’s like, you know, she’s a redhead with no hair – just a redhead. She’s got long black hair all the way down her back; it’s just not on her head – it’s just all the way down her back. She’s got amazing teeth; she could eat an apple through a tennis racquet. The only beautiful thing about her are her eyes – her eyes are beautiful, especially the green one. And we sort of get the feeling, if I say, “Lord, You guide me”, He’ll probably go and do something like that.
Do you know when we have that kind of fear – and it’s a very real fear that many people have about God – it’s because they don’t know God well enough. Let me read you something that Paul wrote in Romans 12: 1,2. I will read you part of Verse 1 and part of Verse 2. He says,
“I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.”
That’s the meek aspect. “Present your body as a sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” Then he says later in Verse 2:
“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
That’s the inheriting the earth bit. He says, “If you present your bodies a living sacrifice to God” and notice by the way, “holy and pleasing to God, - “then you will approve and test what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.”
If you present your body to God, it will be pleasing to Him and He will work out His will in you and it will be pleasing to you. There’s a pleasing on both sides there – did you notice that? You present your body a living sacrifice, pleasing to God – that pleases Him; that thrills Him. And He’ll work out His plan in your life and that’ll please you.
Now notice, he says, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice”, etc…then you are going to test and approve what’s God’s will. Some of us would like a sort of thirty-day trial. “Lord, please guide me for the next 6 months and let’s see what happens. And at the end of six months, if I am going to give myself wholly to You, then, you know, I’ll let You know. But let’s try it for a while.”
No, no, you never discover the will of God until you totally abandon to the will of God. That’s why Jesus said in John 7:17, “He whose will is to do my will, will know that the teaching is from God.”
It’s as you do that you know. You know the will of God when you do it. Does that sound like putting the cart before the horse? No it’s not. As you obey, God guides us. And by the way, 90% of the will of God is in this book. That’s why we need to know this book. It doesn’t tell you what job to do, but by the Holy Spirit He will guide you. But the way in which you live your life, God has revealed that to us as His will already.
And actually God has undertaken to do the guiding; we don’t have to get ourselves guided. Proverbs 3:6 says,
“In all your ways, acknowledge Him; He will direct your paths.”
I realized this about 15 years ago when I stopped praying for God to guide me about 15 years ago and I’ve never been more relaxed than I have these last 15 years. It’s His job to put you in the right place, not to explain it to you. He’ll put you in the right place at the right time with the right people for the right purpose. And as you acknowledge Him in all your ways – it’s a disposition – you get up in the morning so to speak and your attitude is, “Lord, I’m available to You today. Thank you for being my Lord, for being my Saviour, for indwelling me by Your Holy Spirit. I can get on with life and I am going to trust You and just get on with life.”
And you’ll see in retrospect much better than in prospect, the way in which God guides you. You’ll look back and say, “Wow, that was God; I can see it now.” You can’t always; you don’t have to see it. We walk by faith, not by sight. But try and work it out in advance? No, just obey and trust Him. And one important way He does guide us is that He gives us the desires in our hearts that He wants us to have. There’s that great verse in Psalm 37:4:
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Now there’s a wrong way and right way to read that verse. The wrong way is this: if you delight yourself in God, He’ll give you everything you want. That’s the wrong way to read that verse.
The right way to read that verse is: If you delight yourself in the Lord, the desires of your heart will be God-given desires. He puts the right desire within your heart and you begin to follow your desires. That’s why the will of God and what you want is often the same thing. You know, again, this is a very frequent question: is this my will or is it God’s will? I have been asked that question. Have asked it once, a thousand, ten thousand times: is it my will or God’s will? And I always say, “Have you ever thought it might be both?” It is your will, but why is it your will? Because it is Gods will; because you delight yourself in Him, He gives you the desires – He put the desires in your heart.
I’d often say to young people, “What you will find is a remarkable thing, is that when you come to marry somebody, you’ll discover you’ll actually love that person. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?” Why? Because, how do you know this is the person to marry? One of the reasons is God puts in your heart a love and a desire for that person. I’ve never heard of anybody saying – you know a guy saying to a girl, “Listen, I don’t like you very much I’m afraid. I don’t like the way you look, I don’t like the way you act, don’t like the way you dress, don’t like the smell of your breath, but God has told me that we should get married.”
And she says, “Oh that’s interesting; I don’t like you either but I also feel that God wants us to get married.”
The amazing thing is if God wants you to marry, you’ll love each other. Why - because He works in your desires. He works in us, Philippians 2:12 says, “to will and to act according to His good purpose.” There’s the will first. He puts the will, the desire, the appetites for what is right in your heart. And those are both general, as we’ll see next week – or next time – when we talk about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, but specific as well, as He guides you in your life and gives you direction.
And that’s why this is not a threat; it’s a liberating promise. To many people it’s a threat; it’s a kind of catch. “Well, you know, I’ve got the benefit of going to heaven, I want my sins forgiven; oh boy, I knew there would be a catch somewhere.” The catch is you’ve got to surrender your life to Christ.
It’s not the catch; it’s what it’s all about, in order that life on earth might be lived with fulfillment and satisfaction, with a sense of destiny because you are being guided by an eternal God in a time-bound world and your life is far more significant than you will ever know, as God works out His purpose within your life.
I talked to somebody this morning whose mother died two weeks ago and he went to the funeral away out of the city, in fact out of the country. I said, “How was the funeral?”
He said, “You know, it was the most amazing time.” He said, “My mother used to leave her back door open and kids who lived in our area used to come into the house – some of them very, very poor kids and there would always be an extra place laid for dinner and somebody would be there to eat.”
I said, “Was that when you were a kid?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I grew up with that. But after I left home. And he said, “We had dozens of these now adult people who were kids who stood up in the funeral and said, “That lady changed my life. I couldn’t talk to my mom and dad but I could go to her door, didn’t have to knock on the door; it was always open, talk to her. She fed me when there was no food in my house. She cared for me.”
He told me that this morning. His eyes welled up and he said, “You know, I just didn’t know it was as significant as it was.”
I said, “Was she a Christian lady?”
He said, “You bet she was.”
Well I knew before I asked him the question (but I’m a bit dumb) because of the kind of person he described her as being.
And as you say every day, “Lord, my life is not my own. What you have given to me is on trust that I might live it under Your authority, under Your lordship and the enabling of Your Holy Spirit. I’m going to go out into the world and trust You to work out Your purpose for good.”
I love those three words in Romans 12: then you’ll discover this world to be good, pleasing and perfect. If it’s good, how can you improve on it? If it’s pleasing, what more would you want? If it’s perfect, one day you will look back with the hindsight of eternity, when we’re in heaven – we won’t know the whole story till then – we’ll see all the things in our lives that we didn’t enjoy, the things that were difficult, the things that were tough and we’ll see how God, as we have allowed Him into those areas of our lives, has used them in ways we would never have known. And I think we’ll look into His face and have only one thing to say to Him: we’ll say, “Thank You. I didn’t enjoy it in 2001 when it was painful, when I couldn’t see around the corner. But now I see the picture.” And so the thing to do now, when you can’t see the whole picture is still to say, “Thank You”, and to trust Him.
But supposing you are not inheriting the earth, life on earth – it’s not finding its purpose and fulfillment? I’ll tell you why. Because you are not meek, you’re not humbly submissive to Christ as Lord.
If you are not meek, I’ll tell you why. Go back a step; it’s because you’re not mourning your position and allowing the Comforter to get to work in your heart.
If you’re not mourning your condition, I’ll tell you why: because you are not aware of your poverty of spirit. Go back another link. You still think you’ve got what it takes; you’ve not come to the point of recognizing your own bankruptcy. And if you’re not aware of your poverty of spirit, I’ll tell you something about you, that you probably already know, and certainly your wife or husband and kids might know, or your neighbors and friends or your parents might know, and it’s simply this: you’re not happy.
These are the ingredients of happiness. Blessed – happy – are those who are poor in spirit, who then mourn their condition, allow the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to replace what they are with who He is, and then meekly submit to Christ as Lord, because they inherit the earth; these are the ones who live everyday with a sense of purpose and a sense of destiny.
How do you know when this is true in your life? Well, we’ll find out next time, because there are some appetites that begin to bubble up. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,” (whatever that means), “for they will be filled” – satisfied. You don’t choose to hunger and thirst; it just happens as a natural consequence. And when you are living in this relationship with Christ, you don’t have to get a big stick to say, “Now come on, submit.” No, no. The greatest longings of your heart is to know God in all His holiness, righteousness, (which is what that is) and for that righteousness to then be displayed in us, as He lives in us. But we’ll look at that next time.
But maybe there are some of us here this morning and you wonder why it is – and maybe some of you watching on television – you wonder why it is that your life really, even though you would say you have been a Christian for many years, has never been satisfying. Maybe you are not yet a Christian at all. But God the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you as only He can. I can speak to the human ear – the natural mind does not receive the things that come from God – the Spirit reveals them. And some of us in this building this morning and some of you watching on television: there’s been a revelation in your heart and you say, “Oh, I’ve got it, I can see it.” You need to come and surrender to Christ. It’s then a daily disposition. There has to be a beginning. When I got married, there was a beginning. I had to say, “I will.”
“Will you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
I said, “I will.” That was the moment in time that was the beginning. But that isn’t marriage. Marriage is everyday, living in relationship with my wife, my children, providing for them, caring for them, loving them, listening to them, enjoying them.
So it is with God. There is a moment of beginning. And you can go wrong after the beginning. You can go off track. You can stop developing the relationship. But you say, “Lord, I come to You in full surrender”, and then every day enjoy Him, trust Him, believe Him, live for Him. And you’ll discover you’ll inherit the earth.
I’m going to pray and I’m going to lead you in a prayer. There may be some of you who feel today you need to pray a prayer of surrender. Maybe you’ve never become a Christian. Maybe you have and maybe over the years something has grown cold and distant. These aren’t special words but they may help you and I’m going to ask you to pray these with me from your heart to God.
Lord, I thank You so much that You have planned for my life. You have not left me here to roam under my own steam. But Your purpose is to live within me, to guide me and direct me. I acknowledge I’ve been living separate from You. I’ve been following my own course; I’ve been doing my own thing. I confess that to You, I repent of that. And I thank You, having died for me, You can cleanse me of all my sin and having risen again, You are able to indwell me as my Lord. Cleanse me and reign in me I pray. And I’ll thank You every day as You work out Your purpose and bless other people through me. Thank You for hearing my prayer. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.