Beatitudes Part 2

Well, grace and peace be to each one this morning and the question this morning. I have a folder here. It has three pages in it.

Three pages with written words. What if I told you this document here is the most important document in the entire world? What if I told you that this was more important than gold? All the gold you could ever accumulate, all the land you could ever purchase, houses, money and power in your life. What if I told you that? It was more important than any other document.

What if I told you if you were the richest man on earth but you never found this document or applied it to your life that you would be found in the end to be unprepared? What if I told you this document here has lasted centuries? It's outlived empires. It's shaped more lives than any other document. And if these words were actually followed it would change your entire life.

It would change everything you think is normal if this world would follow this document. It would radically change your personality, your character. It would follow you into your home, into your work, into your arguments, into your thoughts.

Who wants to open this document up and tell us what it is? Any girls want to do it? They're all looking at me like no. You want to try Stephen? See what you think this document is. If you need help from your friends there you can ask them.

The Sermon on the Mount. My fear is this morning that, you know, Roger told a fear a while back as a pastor, my fear is that some and maybe even many in this room, some but maybe even many will confess the Sermon on the Mount, will believe the Sermon on the Mount, will study the Sermon on the Mount, and will even be convicted about it. But like Paul said, after going around the entire world, his fear was whether he would be a castaway.

Some would believe it, confess it, study it, be convicted, but in the end be found to have done nothing with the words that are in that document. That sermon was, as I said the last time I preached, was the most important sermon ever preached. The book of Matthew was the early church's most favorite book.

They placed it in that order for a reason. Look it up. And then out of that, out of all the early church fathers, it's quoted the most.

Out of that, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is quoted most out of all of Matthew. Let's all stand and let's open the book of Matthew. Roger said this morning, he said we should memorize more, and I was really tempted to make us sing, but I thought that would just be weird.

So we'll just read. Matthew 5. We're going to read through 11. Let's all together.

We're going to read it in unison. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. And be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Thank you.

You may be seated. May I challenge everyone here to, well, let's ask this. How many people have this memorized? Just what we read.

Okay, we have quite a few hands. Okay, so let's try this. Anybody who is, close your Bibles.

Anybody who is under 20, what's the first blessing? You're not under 20. At least maybe you think you are. Okay, well, Greta got it.

Okay, what's, under 20, who's the second, what's the second one? Mourn. Okay, good. What's the third one? Meek.

Good. What's the fourth one? You can't do it twice. I didn't lay any rules down.

Well, I did. One rule. Okay, now there's a second rule.

Okay, hunger and thirst for righteousness. What's the next one? Pure in heart. Close, we're getting there.

Any girls here? I know you're so quiet, but you all have smiles like you know and you won't say it. Merciful. You're not teaching anybody if you say this, okay? It's okay to say that one thing.

Merciful, yes. Merciful. And then? Pure in heart.

And then? Peacemakers. You're right. And then, is there one more? Is that the next one? Oh, when they're persecuted, right? So, let's do this.

The next time I come to preach, can you try to have this memorized? Now, if you think to yourself, oh, I just can't do it in wording, like just in speaking, I have a song that I can send you, and you can sing it with your family each day. But here, let me ask this question. Does it seem a little strange that the most important sermon ever preached we don't even have to memory? Does it seem a little strange that it might be even hard for us to figure out what's the first one, what's the second one, what's the third one, what's the fourth one? Does that seem a little strange? Like Jesus Christ came to earth, preached the most important sermon ever, and we would struggle to even recall what the things he said were.

I felt convicted about that myself, and so I've been trying to memorize it myself. So, I'd say, let's all commit to, Brother Roger brought it up, let's do some memorization. I challenge you, in the next, you probably have four weeks, in the next three to four weeks, memorize this, so that you can say which one comes first, which one comes second, and what it's connected to, what is the blessing.

I also challenge you to consider meditating. I've been trying to do this lately. I've been thinking each day about one, or maybe two or three days.

Instead of, you know, checking the box and getting your chapter read, think about and read what does poor in spirit mean, and look through everywhere you can in the Bible what poor in spirit means, and think about it all day. Ask yourself, what is poor in spirit? What does it mean to be in poor in spirit? How do I get poor in spirit? Am I poor in spirit? What does poor mean? What does spirit mean? What is the kingdom of heaven? How does it affect me today? How do I get there? Ask these questions and meditate on it. I mean, the most important sermon ever, I think, deserves some time for us to think about.

But that's my fear, that we will come up at the end of our lives, and though we reverenced it, memorized it, studied it, did we apply it? Now, one of the things we said last time I preached was, the very couple of first verses says, he said unto his disciples. The multitudes were there, but it was the disciples that were there that he was teaching. So, to really learn from the Sermon on the Mount, to really apply the things in your life, sure there are great pieces of wisdom, but to really be able to do these things and take them into your heart, you have to be a true disciple of Jesus.

Can anybody remember what a true disciple of Jesus? Just give me some of the things that Jesus said make you a disciple. You might think you're a disciple this morning, but what makes you a disciple? Just one thing, anybody. Taking up your cross daily.

What else did Jesus say? We have to qualify to be his disciple. Obey his commandments. He said, you'll have no part of me if we don't eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Denying yourself, take up your cross, deny yourself. Follow him, right, follow him each day. A couple more.

Taking care of people that are down and out, okay. Love him more than anyone else. And that would go along with the opposite passage that says, if you do not hate your father and your mother, and even your own life, you cannot be my disciple.

Anyone else? This one's probably the hardest. Go ahead, what do you got? Okay. If you're looking back, you're not fit for the kingdom.

You know, one thought I had when Dennis closed it down and I wanted to raise my hand, but, you know, I was thinking, we don't maybe know what Jesus meant by all those things, but we do know this, that he's demanding absolute allegiance. Whatever it means, right? And if he did tell you, don't go to a funeral, then you can't go to the funeral. Whatever it means, he is Lord.

If we call him our Lord, whatever he tells us to do, if we would have been walking with him physically and he said, no, we're not going to that funeral, like Lazarus, for example, don't go to the funeral. That's what disciples do. We obey him.

And so he's calling for absolute allegiance. In this one, whoever that be of you that does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple. That's a big one, right? Everything we have has to be forsaken.

So this is what disciples do. They follow Jesus, they do these things he said, and these teachings are for him. And so he goes on and he talks about being blessed.

Now, we call them beatitudes, by the way. Does anybody remember why we call them beatitudes from the last sermon? Yes, the Latin, they were called beatus, and so people knew them as the beatitudes in Latin. When he said blessed, it wasn't just that he meant happy.

He meant what we might say the word today as fortunate or an enviable state. Somebody you look at, who are some people we look at today and we say, they are, they just, everything's going great for them. Name some names that, like, come to your mind.

They are in an enviable state. What would the world say? These people are in an enviable state. We look up to them, we wish we could be like them.

Who comes to your mind? That's the Facebook guy, right? Right, Mark Zuckerberg, okay. Mr. Beast. Hey, that's spoken like the next generation.

Of course. We used to think, you know, millionaires, like people who started big companies, now it's YouTube that people look up to. Who else comes to mind? What about Trump? I mean, the guy's got so much money and land, some people look up to him like the Republicans.

What about Taylor Swift? Isn't she some kind of great singer or something like this? What about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? I don't know if he still owns Amazon. Those are kind of people that the world looks up to and says, these are the blessed, right? And in their day, they probably had similar people. So when Jesus said, blessed are these people, they fall on their ears.

What they were blessed for must have been very strange. Poor in spirit, the very first one. And this is the lowest form of poor, as in like completely impoverished.

Not just I'm getting by, but I need absolute help from people. I'm completely dependent. Imagine if you broke your leg and you could not work and you had to sit outside and people had to bring you money.

That's the kind of poor. An absolute zero. And those are the blessed ones in Jesus' kingdom.

The ones that are like the branch that say, I cannot do anything without you. I have to stay connected. I'm a zero.

And he said to them that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. He said it was in their midst, but not of this world.

He said you had to be born again to enter and be like a little child. He said that you had to repent and believe. He made it synonymous with eternal life.

And Paul later said that it wasn't just about meat and drink, but it was righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. That's what the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God was. It wasn't just talk, Paul said, but it was power.

Paul told us later that the unrighteous would not inherit it and that it was the opposite of darkness. So the best way to put it is the kingdom of heaven is God's active reign through Christ. It's present now in our hearts and all of those who repent and truly believe.

And it will be fully revealed in the future when God restores and rules over all creation forever. And so we talked about becoming poor in spirit. How do we become poor in spirit? We have to see God.

Job said when he saw God, he said he put his hand over his mouth and he said, I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes. Isaiah said, woe to me, I am undone because I'm a man of unclean lips. Daniel said, there remain no more strength in me before my humbleness was turned into corruption.

And Peter fell at his knees and he said, depart from me. Lord, I'm a sinful man. That's what it looks like to be poor in spirit when we see God.

So how do we interpret these Beatitudes? Are they just black and white? If I'm humble, then I get the kingdom of heaven. If I mourn, do I get comforting? Does it always work? Is it just black and white? Well, Jesus himself later in the same sermon gave other requirements for the kingdom of heaven. He said that not all who call me Lord, Lord and say to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father.

And so as we read these Beatitudes, they're not just necessarily standing alone. They have to be interpreted with a broader context of what Jesus taught. There's many passages what Jesus said, the requirements to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But one of them for sure is to be poor in spirit. So all true disciples of Jesus that are inheriting the kingdom of heaven are poor in spirit. Not necessarily everybody who's poor in spirit is inheriting the kingdom of heaven.

And so Jesus pronounced this blessing, this good news. And what's so amazing about these Beatitudes is their fulfillments of the Old Testament, fulfillments of the good news. We might look at them as some kind of checklist, but think of it as it fell on their ears and the modern world's thought that blessed are these kind of people.

And Jesus saying, no, blessed are the ones that have been being taken advantage of. Blessed are the ones who have been crushed and overlooked, but have been faithful. This was the good news that Jesus was coming to preach.

In Psalms it says, the Lord is close or nigh to them that are of a broken heart and saved such that be of a contrite spirit. And so Jesus was saying this is happening now. The second one here I'd like to look at this morning is blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Now the word mourn is translated different places in the New Testament, mourn and wail. What do you think of when you think of wailing? We don't do that much in this country, do we? Wailing, I think of somebody just like very transparent, right? Very not thinking about themselves in that moment. You think of maybe other countries like the Middle Eastern countries or Russia that will do that.

In the Old Testament in the Septuagint it's translated lament and languish. It's the strongest Greek form of losing something very dear to you. So if I lost my wife or if I lost my children, I would mourn.

Abraham, when he lost his wife it's the same Greek word, mourn. Jacob, when he lost his son or at least he thought he lost his son. David, when Absalom went, he mourned and he would not be comforted.

Mourning may be expressed by weeping or audible sounds, sobs, sighs or even inward grief. I wonder why. Why did Jesus say, blessed are they that mourn? Why did he say that? Anybody have a thought? Okay, mourning over their sin.

Okay, that could be. It could be that it's a spiritual only but maybe it's something more. What do you think? Maybe somebody under 30.

Why did Jesus say, blessed are they that mourn? This is good. It's called meditation. Thinking, we're trying to figure out what Jesus meant.

It's something harder than mourning about thinking that, that I'm really seeking God then. So maybe he's just saying, this is a blessing to you because it's helping you to seek God and get closer to God. Yeah, that's a good thought.

Anyone else? Is it better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting? That's in the Old Testament. Comfort outside of yourself. That's a good thought.

There's an aspect of mourning that is like a neediness. And a lot of the other reactions are kind of similar. And maybe Jesus is saying, when you're in a spot of needing something, you're closer to God.

Yeah, I kind of thought of it like, you know, how many people like pain in your life? You know, you kind of like it? You don't care? Like the other day, I was pulling a chain up and I just whack, right? I might still have a little bump right here. But anyway, you know that pain that comes over you and all you can think about is the pain. You're just walking around.

Titus said he could tell I wasn't acting my normal self. I was just wandering aimlessly. You know, all I'm thinking about is when will this pain go away? Is that a blessing? Pain? But when you think about it, if we didn't have pain, you know, that's what happens with lepers.

They say that they don't feel the ends of their feet and they bang it against things and hit it against things and they get some bug gnaws on them at night time and they don't even know it. You know, they get an infection and they have all these problems because they don't feel pain. So we think pain is, oh, I just don't.

But, you know, it's a blessing to have pain. And I wonder, like you were saying, several of you were saying, what if mourning is a blessing like Jesus said? Because, you know, when we mourn, we're broken. When we mourn, whether it is for our sin or whether it is even for something that happened in our life.

You know, many times, I hope I'm not picking on you, Benjamin, but I was with him the other night and he said, you know, MS really woke him up and he's thankful for MS. But see, in that moment, with this sickness that came over him, this disease, he started seeking God. He started becoming serious about it and it became a blessing in his life. And so mourning can be that in our life.

It can be a, whether it's over a circumstance, whether God or we have seen our sin, it can be something that's a blessing, Jesus says. But that's not the world's mindset. The world's mindset is blessed are the happy, right? Blessed are the ones that never cry and that can tell lots of good jokes.

You know, those comedians on YouTube, man, those guys are the blessed ones. They're amazing how they can keep the audience going. Blessed are the ones that don't experience loss.

But Jesus says this in another passage, woe to you that laugh now. He says, woe to you who are rich. And then he goes on to say, woe to you that laugh now.

Jesus says it's the opposite in his kingdom. People who are mourned are broken. They're not self-reliant.

I still remember going to a funeral and as the person was walking by the casket and saw the body, he began to wail and just, and I thought, you know, wow, that you definitely have to be not thinking about yourself in your self-image to start wailing in front of 400 Mennonites or whatever they were all sitting back there. You ever, that's always an embarrassing time to walk up the front and be thinking about that moment and all these other people watching you. I don't like that.

But anyway, can you imagine wailing in front of all those people? Like that would be, you wouldn't be thinking about self anymore. You would be thinking about the situation and the loss and you'd be broken. And that's something with mourning is it's, is at that point you're broken.

You're recognizing the loss and the need. And like Caleb said, you're seeking comfort for outside of yourself and it's dismantling in your mind the image of control. You're vulnerable and you're transparent.

The world associates crying and that kind of thing with weakness. But Jesus says it's the opposite. I don't know if you knew this, but in second Corinthians, God is actually has a title.

He's called the God of all comfort. And the promise here is that if you're a true disciple of Jesus, those who mourn are comforted. That's what the Bible says.

That's what Jesus says. Comfort. It's interesting how the first one we read is more of an intellectual.

The poor in spirit. I realize I'm a zero. I realize I'm nothing.

There's not much emotions involved there, but the next one, mourning, is emotional. And so it really encompasses our whole being. First of all, we recognize intellectually, I am nothing.

And secondly, we recognize in our own emotions, I need God. I'm broken. I am not whole.

I read this quote somewhere. Religion, according to the Bible, is neither a set of intellectual convictions nor a bundle of emotional feelings, but a compound of both. The former giving birth to the latter.

So religion isn't just about intellect and it's not just about emotions. It's about both put together. Now, this is interesting because this blessed are they that mourn is actually a fulfillment of a prophecy out of Isaiah.

Let's all turn there. Isaiah 61. Who would like to read one through three for me nice and loud? Isaiah 61, one through three.

And look for what Jesus, look for this fulfillment. Somebody's gonna need to tell me, how did, where did Jesus, what part of this is the fulfillment? To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that ye may be glorified. So what was the fulfillment here of this prophecy? Did you hear it? What was read that was the fulfillment? The oil of joy for mourning.

It said in verse two, to comfort all that mourn, to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called the trees of righteousness. Now, did you notice in verse one, it said this was good tidings or good news. So this was way back in Isaiah's time.

And yet, does anybody remember when Jesus said these words? And he was in the tabernacle and he got up and read this. And then what did he say? The scripture has been fulfilled. And he sat down.

And so, Jesus was bringing this in. I like how Jesus goes to the Old Testament prophecies and then brings them into the Sermon on the Mount and say, I'm fulfilling this now. Now, Roger said, maybe it's for mourning over our sin.

And I think that is true. I think that not only when we lose things and bad things happen in our life, it creates a brokenness in us and a desire and a need for God that maybe we don't have when we're not going through those. But I have the question this morning, how many of us sitting in this room have truly mourned over our sins? In the New Testament, it says that godly sorrow works repentance to salvation.

James says, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. And then he says this in verse three, nine, sorry, be afflicted and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. I don't know if you've ever had this happen before, but sometimes I've been in a situation where we're having fun, we're laughing, we're telling funny jokes and something is said and I know if I laugh at it, I'm going to quench the spirit.

Have you ever had that happen? And you know, and you wanna laugh at it and maybe you do laugh at it and you know that you shouldn't be laughing at it. And that's a big flag in our heart. Sometimes laughing and comedians and the New Testament talks about coarse joking, it says let it not be once named, they are the opposite effect of true mourning.

Notice what James says, he says to be afflicted and mourn, cleanse your hands from the sin that's in your life. Draw nigh to God. This is part of the process of becoming true disciples of Jesus is to mourn over our sins.

Psalm says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. God finally draws near to us because there's finally room in our life because of when we're mourning many times, the pride is left and the pride in the self-sufficiency. Mourning and contrition on the opposite hand opens the door to God.

Pride says I'm sufficient. Mourning says I am not. And grace can only follow where dependence exists.

Paul said in Romans 7 after the long buildup, he said, oh, wretched man that I am. I tried to do this and I tried to do that. I can't do right.

He says, he cries out in a weeping mourning kind of style. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? But here's something to think about.

On one other example, Peter went out and wept bitterly after he had denied the Lord. But here's something to think about. When you are mourning for your sin, you're actually, you're actually repenting.

When you are mourning for your sin, you're actually on that first step to getting victory over your sin. Mourning over our sin is much better than coming up with some new idea how I'm going to get over my sin on my own. But actually seeing our sin and allowing ourselves to weep and mourn over it is a step towards repentance.

And the promise here is they shall be comforted. Notice the word come, C-O-M, and F-O-R-T. What does fort make you think of when you hear that? If we're trying to figure out what does this word mean and we never had a dictionary, what would come and then what would that fort mean? No wrong answer.

What do you think F-O-R-T would stand for? Security. Yeah, guarded. Safety.

It comes from the Latin and it does mean that. Strong, a stronghold, like we call it a fort. It's a stronghold.

And so come means together. Come, right? Communion. And so it's come and strong, to strengthen greatly, to make strong, to fortify.

So the promise is that God will come near and he will strengthen us. The God of all comfort, one of his titles. Webster says it's to strengthen, the English word comfort, to strengthen, to invigorate, to cheer or enliven.

To strengthen the mind when depressed, to console, to give new vigor to the spirits. I don't know, have you ever, I remember thinking about this some time ago, but you ever notice when somebody's sobbing, you're just crying, what is the natural urge inside of you to do? Maybe it's just me. What's that? Yeah, isn't that interesting? Now, if they're just sitting there normal, you don't feel any desire to go.

I mean, maybe you do, but you don't just, it's not the natural overflow. I need to go hug them. But you see somebody sobbing and you just feel like you need to go hug them.

It just feels like the right thing to do. And I wonder if that's a little part of God's nature in us. Like we're made in his image.

And so when we see somebody crying and weeping and lamenting, there's just something in our hearts that says, go comfort them. And that's what God, that's his nature. He wants to come and comfort us when we're in a position of brokenness and contrition.

All over in the Old Testament, it says that. And so Jesus literally fulfilled these things in his ministry. He raised the widow of Nain, the widow at Nain, her dead son.

He says he had compassion on the child and said, sit up and then delivered her back. And everybody said, God has visited our people. The woman who came in with deep contrition over sins and was weeping at his feet and washing his feet, he looked to her and comforted her and said, women, your sins are forgiven you.

So Jesus, throughout his ministry, and I would say even through to today, continues to comfort people. And we are supposed to be part of that comforting as the church. It says in that passage, the God of all comfort may comfort you, that you may comfort others.

So as you've received God's comfort, that's what one of our gifts are as a church is to comfort others who have lost in their life. So I guess my question is, blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Two things.

When something bad goes on in your life, whatever it is, don't look at it as a bad thing. Don't complain about it. Look at it as a good thing.

It's a blessing because it's bringing you lower so that God can come near. Embrace it and use it to draw near to God. And number two, have you really mourned for your sin? Have you seen your sin? And if you haven't, I would say you need to ask God to show you your sin, to show you your wickedness.

I remember back when I sinned really bad and for a long time my wife couldn't, she just struggled to forgive me, just struggled to forgive me. And then one day, I guess, according to her own testimony, God showed her her own sin and that gave her the ability to forgive me because God gave her a glimpse of her own sin. She said that she was thinking about that song and it talks about Jesus and it's saying, And to God I give my life.

And he was there dying on the cross and he gave her a vision of that she was the one that was crying out and mocking against him. So God can give you a vision of what your sin is and how great it is. And that's the sin that the unforgiving servant and the master, all of that situation didn't have.

He didn't have a view of his own sin. Let's go on a little bit longer here. And blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Now, okay, under 25, let's try this again. What do you think that means, meek? What is meekness? If you were to just give your own definition. Tamed, okay.

Humble. Power under control. Okay, under 35.

Good job praising your wife. We'll have to all come over tomorrow and watch so we can get a good definition. So, anyone under 55, what is meekness? Okay, this is healthy, I think.

Those are all good definitions. Now, many times we think, naturally speaking, we think meekness is weakness, right? The word just means gentle or mild. And I think in the ESV it reads gentle.

Well, actually not this passage. But it is translated in some translations as gentle. And if we're honest with ourselves, when situations come into our life, being mild and gentle is sometimes just the weak thing to do, right? And so, we might have all the great theological definitions, but we don't like this meek word because it feels weak.

But it really means someone who is waiting on God for vengeance. Someone who is trusting God through all of life, through all of circumstances. I found this definition and I thought it was great.

It says this, meekness towards God, and this is on the Greek word. If you go on the Blue Letter Bible, you look up Proust and you read it right there. It says meekness toward God is that disposition of spirit.

That means this is how your spirit is standing and how it operates day to day. In which we accept his dealings, God's dealings with us as good. Like that song, Day by Day, and with each passing moment.

And it says, help me Lord in every situation, so to trust thy promises, oh God, and then help me to take everything as coming from the Father's hand. So, we accept his dealings with as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting. In the Old Testament, the meek are those who wholly relied on God rather than their own strength and defended against injustice.

Thus, meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that he is using them to purify his elect, and that he will deliver his elect in his time. Gentleness or meekness is the opposite to self-assertiveness and self-interest. It stems from trusting God's goodness and control over the situation.

The gentle person is not occupied with self at all. This is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of the human will. Last night I was driving, and a car, nice muscle car, came driving by, around me.

First he was behind me, and then just sped up real fast. I turned to my wife and I said, if I was in my flesh right now, I would, I was in the minivan by the way, I would just gun the gas and go around him. And one time I did that.

This was way back in the day, back before I was a meek Christian. But we were going down a dirt road. I think maybe Timothy was just a baby.

Was Timothy a baby in the back? In a car seat. And we're going down a dirt road, and this is in Montana, and I'm in a Honda Accord, and this was not a real smooth dirt road. And somebody came, I don't remember what kind of vehicle he was in, but came to pass me on a dirt road.

How, that's not wise. And so what did I do? I decided, no, you're not going to pass me. So I gun the gas in my Honda Accord.

And we were flying down this dirt road, me and this other guy in my Honda Accord. And we were going, I mean, my wife was over there saying prayers. She thought we were dying.

And it was getting crazier as the car, it was going up a hill and around a corner, and I was just, I'm going to beat this guy. And I'm not going to let him pass me on a dirt road of all things. And finally, I think he was in a truck or something, so I couldn't keep up.

And he passed me. And I, like maybe a year later, I met the guy, and we both kind of looked at each other and said, that was a really dumb move. Do you think that was very meek? Probably not, right? It was a moment of self-assertion, a moment of, I'm going to have it my way.

I have rights. You shouldn't pass me on this dirt road. That's not the way of Christ.

Blessed are the meek. It's not the natural mindset. Somebody said a tamed horse.

The word praus was used in Greek, and it was used for horses that were brought up from the mountains and brought down in, and they would train them. And the best horses that could go into battle and would stay on task and listen to their master, they were considered praus, which is the word for meek here. So when Jesus said, blessed are the praus, he's talking about this idea of strength under control, of relying on God, not somebody who is dominating and standing up for number one and protecting my rights.

Matthew, can you bring me my phone here? We have a couple more minutes. I'm going to show you a picture. Thank you.

Okay. You see this picture? What does it look like? Somebody say what you think it is. Hummingbird, right? And what's on top of the hummingbird feeder? What do you think he's doing up there? Yeah, this wasn't this morning, though.

What's he doing up on top of the hummingbird feeder? Protecting his food. So I sat there one morning while I was doing devotions with the boys, and I watched this hummingbird. He comes in.

I mean, he's got endless supplies of sugar water from some supernatural source that continually fills this thing and even puts lights under it to keep the thing going. But no, no, no, no. He is going to protect us.

Any hummingbird that comes near, he chases off. Will not let them get there. He has rights.

He has found the stash of sugar water. Do you think he's being meek? No. That thing is being selfish.

Standing up for himself. The opposite of meekness. And so, meekness is a willingness to submit and work under proper authority.

It's trusting God that he will do the settling in his own time. It's disregarding your own rights, your own privileges. It doesn't mean blindness.

Jesus was meek. Moses was the meekest man on earth, it says. Jesus said, I am meek and I am lowly.

But Jesus chased people out with a whip. Jesus called Herod a fox. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were woe unto Pharisees, right? But he was meek.

Moses went in and spoke right to Pharaoh. He was meek. So, meek doesn't necessarily mean weak.

It just means you're waiting on God and you do what God tells you to do. If God tells you to go whip some, well, not whip people. I don't think he'll tell you that.

But he probably might tell you, maybe he'll tell you sometime to drive some people out. Maybe he would. I don't know.

But it means you're doing what God wants you to do. And when it's not God's timing, you wait on him. So, it's trusting God.

I'm going to stop there. I have a little more thoughts, but I'll pick it up next time about meekness. But I do want to challenge you.

Please, try to memorize. Matthew 5, 1 through, let's go through 12. And maybe next time, we can see how many of us can say it without our Bibles open.

If you want the song version, if that helps you, because for me, it does help having it attuned, because then it helps me remember what's the next word, just text me and I'll text it to you. It's the whole Sermon on the Mount, so you can start working on all of it. But at least you can work on from 1 to 13.

God bless you, each one of you.