The Beatitudes #4

So this morning we're going to be continuing our study of the Beatitudes that are found at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to be focusing on verse 5, where Jesus instructs us in the fruit of gentleness. This is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and it's one of the things I believe is most lacking in the church today. It would not describe us as being gentle people. And I think the reason that there's such a deficiency with regard to gentleness is because when we think of gentleness, it comes with almost an invitation to be abused or taken advantage of, or that at the very least you're going to lose. If I'm gentle, I will lose. If I'm gentle, I will be walked all over. And everything that we take in in our society runs in the other direction of gentleness. It says, no, stand up, be firm, be assertive, make everyone else bend to your will. So as a result, we've not cultivated the spiritual gift of gentleness.

And so as we study our text this morning, my hope is that God will show us the blessing of gentleness. It actually is a blessing and that he'll help us to pursue it. Our text this morning is Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. As we've worked our way through each of the Beatitudes, we've taken first the attribute, poor in spirit, mourning, the first half of it, and we focused on that, and then we've moved on to the result of of that attribute, which is membership in the kingdom or comfort. This week, though, we're going to do it the other way. We're going to start with the result, and then we're going to go back and say, how is that result attained? And so in our verse this morning, it says, blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. The characteristic or attribute is gentleness. The result of it is that we would inherit the earth. Now, there are two ways that we can interpret

this phrase, they shall inherit the earth. The first, I'm convinced, and we know the first interpretation, I think there's a physical interpretation when we think of this world, and then there's another interpretation where we think of the world to come. What we may not recognize in this passage is that Jesus, in talking about inheriting the earth, is speaking, is quoting scripture, he's quoting Psalm 37. In Psalm 37, verses 10 and 11, David says, And so this is an instruction to us. And then he says this, And so the disciples would have understood Jesus talking primarily about a physical blessing, this earth. They would not first and foremost have thought this blessing is a blessing that is only in the life to come. They would have understood it as in the world and in this life, the one that they're living right now. All throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites were concerned with the land, their land, the land of Canaan. That wasn't a bad thing for them to be concerned with, and it's something that Jesus did that did not, it's not something Jesus did away with when he came to earth. He didn't say, oh, there's no longer a land to be concerned about. There's no longer a world to be concerned about. You are to be only concerned with

the world to come. In Ephesians 6, where Paul is instructing children, he tells them to obey their parents in the Lord for this is right. And then he quotes the Old Testament and he says, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. And so this idea of our habitation and our expectations for living in this world, we're not done away with when Jesus came. We don't say, oh, well, that doesn't matter anymore. We should interpret this only as regarding The world to come. The issue of land and physical blessing here and now were not removed in the New Testament, but reinforced, strengthened. And it's important that we see this theme in Scripture so that we don't make the mistake of thinking that this life or this earth and the earth to come are somehow an either-or proposition. It's a both-and construction. There will be blessing both in this world, to those who are gentle, and in the world to come.

When Jesus was speaking in Luke 18, he said this, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God. And then he says, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come eternal life. And so we see that Jesus says, if you'll sacrifice and if you'll follow me, you will receive blessing and reward in this life and in the life to come. There is a blessing that won't come until the age to come. And our expectations should align with what Jesus is teaching here, that there will be blessing both now and later. Now, this necessarily means that the blessing that Jesus is speaking of here, we will not get all of it now, and we will not get all of it later. You remember when Jesus was speaking about the rich man and Lazarus, his condemnation of the man was that you've received your reward in full.

You've received all your good things. You've received all your rewards. There is nothing for you in the life to come. And so we have to understand as Christians from the very beginning that we will not receive all of the blessings that are ours in this life. Which is not to say that God is our debtor or that he owes us something. That somehow he'll have to make up for it in heaven because he didn't pay it all forward now. But that in his wisdom, he dispenses blessing to us. and the earth to us in his time and in his way. So what does it mean to inherit the earth? Well, in a spiritual sense, it means that there will be a new heaven and a new earth. This is what the Bible teaches us. That in the life to come, this heaven and this earth will be done away with. There will be a new one, and we will be the inhabitants of this new earth. And that only God's people will inhabit this new heaven and this new earth. And that way will be very different than their current life.

in this current world. But what about in this life? What does it mean to inherit the earth before we die? Well, first, I think you have to realize that that's something that everyone wants. To inherit the earth means to gain power or influence or wealth or acclaim. Whatever the world's reward is, that's what it means to inherit the earth. What is an inheritance except the wealth and power and position of those who've gone before us being given to us? That's what an inheritance is. And so when he says that you're going to inherit the earth, he's saying that there's power and influence that will come with it. In a word, we could describe inheriting the earth as to rule or to reign over it. And this is a desire that all of us have. Which one of us is happy to sit by and say, you know what?

Whatever can happen in the world, and it doesn't matter to me. I'm happy to just have my little plot of land or my little place and my little sphere of influence, and I don't have aspirations for more than that. We all have aspirations for more than that. Back to Adam. We see this desire for more than that. And with Adam, he was promised the world, and it wasn't enough. He wanted to become like God. And so from Adam all the way through to us, This has been our heart's desire to have rule and reign over the earth. After the flood, we have the account of the Tower of Babel. Do you know why those men wanted to build this tower? They saw that there was a vulnerability that they had. They said, if we don't do this, we are going to be scattered abroad. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take clay and we're going to burn it with fire thoroughly, which is to say we're going to make...

Good bricks that we can build really tall with. We're going to build a tower up to heaven. And they said, this we will do so that we can make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we'll be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. Now, you have to ask for a second, who was going to scatter them? They recognized that it would have been God who scattered them. And so they recognized that their desire to rule over the earth did not mean only that they had to steal it away from other men, but that they had to steal it away from God. And so they said, we're going to build a tower up to heaven so that we can be like as God, so that we will have power, so that we will have strength, so that we will have the earth. It will be ours. Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach up into heaven and let us make ourselves a name otherwise.

We will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. And so from the very beginning, from Adam to the Tower of Babel, through the Old Testament, through the New Testament, through the kingdoms of this earth, the desire has been to have power and reign in the world. Any of the great figures of history that we can look back on, the names that we would recognize, or the empires that we would say, yes, I see that. This was their desire, to inherit the earth, to be. The boss. What was the Roman Empire's desire? To inherit the earth. What did Napoleon want? Or Alexander the Great? Or Hitler? Or Stalin? Or 21st century American? Our government, us as a people, what do we want but world dominion? We want to inherit the earth. All of the great kingdoms this world has ever known have had this one thing, this one desire as their root.

It has always been this way, and the lengths to which men have gone to take hold of the earth have been awful. What tactics have been employed? What methods have been adopted? How much blood has been shed in the pursuit of inheriting the earth? War, starvation, even of your own people, child sacrifice, these are just some of the instruments that men have used to seek power in the world. Now, I'm not so foolish as to think that any one of you are sitting here plotting and scheming and getting ready to hatch a plan for world domination with you at the top. That doesn't mean you don't have the desire for it. It just means you lack the means, the ability. And so when you look at those who are more powerful in society, it creates a reaction in you. It causes you to be frustrated with those who are in power and to think that if you were in power, you would do better.

How many times at work, those of you who work outside the home, how many times at work, how often do you say, my boss is stupid. He doesn't know what he's doing. I know how to do it better than him. It's daily. Pretty much every time he says, hey, I need you to do this, you're like, well, if he only understood. How many times in your home do you wives think of your husbands? I know better than him. How many times do you children think of your parents? They're so stupid. They don't understand. They give me all this work. They don't understand. It's cutting into my playtime. How many times do you husbands come home from work and see what your wife's done and think, I don't know why she can't do more. If I was home, I'd do it better. You see that we do this everywhere. We do it in the church. How easy is it to get frustrated with the leadership of the church? Oh, it's easy.

The people, I'll tell you, the people who make me most nervous in this church are the ones who show up and think I'm great. Because I think you're going to find out at some point, it's going to be my job to show you I'm not what you're thinking I am. And our elders are not what you are. We're just men. And we fail, and we do stupid things, and we lack faith, and we sin. And the sooner you realize that, the better. Because that will be the protection against your bitterness later. If you can come in the beginning, you can see, hey, these guys aren't perfect, but they are trying to serve the Lord. And they do fail along the way. How about politics? Those who seem to be inheriting the earth by leaps and bounds, taking over power, increasing their authority and their reach. Every one of us who isn't able to jump on that bandwagon, we...

we comfort ourselves with the thought that, well, at least if I did it, I would do it better. I would do a better job. Because I know how to do their job better than they do. A good example of this is the abortion bill here in Indiana. This just passed this last week. I've got friends, there's people in this church, have differing opinions about that bill. About whether it was a righteous bill or whether it was an unrighteous bill or whether it's something, a good bill or a bad bill or whether it goes far enough or whether we should vote for it or whether we shouldn't have voted for it.

But the sentiment of every one of us is that we would have done better than the men who actually voted for it if we had more power. And I'll tell you, the one comment that I've appreciated from men as they're criticizing the weaknesses of the bill or saying there are some good things about it is to say, if it was actually my job to vote for it, I don't know what I would have done. Because that's humility. And that indicates they have some knowledge of themselves that they don't think, I'm the best thing since sliced bread. And if people would just realize how good of an authority I would be, everything would be better. To be a Christian, to be gentle, is to realize you are not better than your fellow man. And you're probably not better at their job. In fact, you can almost be assured that you would be worse at it. The man who recognizes his lust for power is far better equipped to fight against it than the one man who's ignorant of it, who thinks, I could do better than everyone else if we just let me do it. It's been a habit in our church that if someone comes to us and they say, well, I don't like the way we do this thing or this ministry or that, whatever. Do you know what that translates to almost always if you come to me or tell the elders that? Guess what? Please do it better.

Come and talk to us and we'll put you to work about it. You think our work days don't go well or aren't often enough or aren't organized or you think that the nursery needs to be done better or you think the ushers or you think the whatever? Come on in, buddy. Come feel all the pressures that the person that's in charge of it has to do and realize the difficult decisions they have to make. And if you are capable of doing it better, then praise God. But many times it's simply an exercise in humility or humiliation. You see, we all want to inherit the earth, which is to say we all want the power. We all want more and more people coming into our orbit, revolving around us, listening to us, paying attention to us, taking their cues from us, obeying us. And what do you do to get it? What's the common way of doing it? How do you get people to come into your orbit? Do you say what your failures are? No. Whose failures do you talk about?

You always, always, always talk about the people who are in power as failures. And when I hear a man complain about some other, the first words or the most words out of his mouth are to complain about the leadership of someone else, my respect for that man goes down because I think you have no clue. You have no clue what you're talking about. And you may well be right about the failure of this other guy, but the way you speak about it betrays that you don't know yourself and that you really do think you'd do better. And so one of the things that attends this pursuit of power is to tear other people down. It's just part and parcel of it. In the home, what would lead a wife to drip like a faucet? It's pretty simple. Contempt for her husband. And her thinking she knows better than him how to do whatever it is needs to be done. And so her thought is, not rationally, and you realize I can say the same thing about men.

Her thought is, if I tear my husband down and tell him how stupid he is and how foolish he is and how many mistakes he makes, somehow all of the authority will flow to me. But that's not what the Bible tells you will happen. What's the Bible tell a wife that will happen if she does that? Her husband will avoid. He'd rather stay on the corner of the house in the rain. He'd rather live in a desert. You will tear your house down. You say, no, no, I'm going to build my house up. I just need to be the one building. And I say, no.

That's not what the Bible says will happen. You'll tear it down. What else other than tearing people down? How else do we try to inherit the world, the earth? How do we try to gather authority to ourselves? We don't talk about our failures. We will talk about our successes. Men that talk all the time about themselves, it's just gross. It's like, again, I don't think he knows himself. And I say that as someone who has this problem. I'm always happy to tell you a story or tell you about something or tell you what I think. This is me, and I think you're a fool. You think by your many words, people will come to respect you and honor you and submit to you and follow you. And in that way, you'll build your little part of the earth and you'll expand your territory. These things don't work. They're ungodly. To spend your life trying to take over the world by tearing other people down and talking about how great you are,

It was a fool's errand. You remember that Jesus, when he was on his way into Jerusalem to be killed, a dispute arose amongst the disciples. And what was it? Who's the greatest? Which one of us is the greatest? Which one of us should be the heir apparent? When Jesus is gone, who's number two? Who's the guy waiting in the wings? Even as their Lord was walking to his death. We think of ourselves as far more spiritual than those disciples who are arguing about their own wisdom and strength and qualification as they were walking to Jesus' death. We think, well, I would never do that. And I'd say, oh, yes, you would, and yes, you do. Each day, you do. You want to inherit the earth. And you think that the way to do it is by tearing down the people around you.

Whether those people are your siblings or those people are your spouse or those people that you work with or those are the people that are in leadership in our government, you think that the way to increase yourself is to tear others down, to assert yourself. And the longer it goes on, the longer you believe this lie and perpetuate it, the more bitter you become. Because it turns out that authority and power and influence doesn't flow to people who behave that way. Not in the long run. It can in the short term, and we'll come to that in a moment. But in the long run, people who are always talking about themselves, they're like a match. They flare up and there's lots of fire, but in 10 seconds, it's burned out. It's gone. You have to ask yourself, honestly, what is my resume? What is the proof that I would do a better job? If you are going to be critical, you do have to be honest and say, what evidence is there other than my words?

that I would do a better job than somebody else. Another way of asking it is, who would vouch for you? Why would they vouch for you? What would they say? In politics, it's one of the things that primaries sort out. If you're not even competing against your opponent, you're like the other party. Can you get enough people to agree with you in your own party? presumably you have lots of things in common with. Can you get enough of them to say, I think that guy's going to do a better job? And if the answer is, based on the results of the election, no, then you have to realize this is a reflection on you. Now, what will men who lose primaries say? They'll point to money. Is money a real thing? Yeah, if somebody spends half a million dollars and you only spend $50,000, yeah, there's a disparity here, and it will matter. Say again?

Yeah, why do they have more money is one question. Yes, there is a proven track record. You would say, that's the problem. And I say, well, you see, I don't think, I think we're often, if we're willing to have our sins known at all, we're only willing for ourselves to say what they are. We're not willing for anyone else to pass judgment on us. And the interesting thing about this blessing, this beatitude, is that it has reference to other people. Gentleness has an object that's not you. It's not something that happens inside of you. It's discernible. You could look at a group of people and say, they're gentle and they're not. And to the one who says they're not, they have a reason why they think you're not gentle. And which one of us is willing to have other people describe our sins? We might be willing for ourselves to say it. Well, I lack patience. Well, I got angry that time.

Well, I'm lazy. Well, I'm proud. Well, I shouldn't have said that. But if someone else comes to us and says, you should not have done that. That was sin. Boy, don't you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up and don't you get frustrated and say, you can't say that about me. And that's because we think that the way to inherit the earth is by building ourselves up in everyone else's eyes. You realize that when men come into leadership in the church, Which is to say, they come into a position of more responsibility, of more authority. What is one of the primary qualifications of an officer? It's that his household be well managed. That he have children that believe. And the Bible is explicit in saying, for if he doesn't know how to manage his own household, how will he manage the church of God? If he's not succeeding here, Don't put him into a position where his failures are more devastating. So what's the resume? What do you have? Who do you have that would say, this guy, this woman, we should listen to them? What should we be paying attention to? How should we suss out the truth from the lies? What should we be looking for? What credentials? Jesus tells us, gentleness. That they be gentle. Now this is a...

This word, I don't think we even understand it. You remember in the beginning of these Beatitudes I said to you, I'm not talking about natural disposition. These are spiritual qualifications, spiritual characteristics that are to be true of all of us, of every Christian. So I'm not talking about the person who's naturally deferential or the one who's generally content or the one that's predisposed to go along to get along, the one who's not a fighter or the one who's weak. I think oftentimes gentleness, really means to us someone who's weak, someone who loses, someone who lacks ambition, someone who just doesn't care that much. That that's what gentleness actually is. They just seem to be like, oh yeah, okay, whatever, that's fine. But the idea that you could have someone who is strong and gentle doesn't seem to fit together. And yet gentleness is the credential for inheriting the earth. Gentleness is the opposite of our conception that we've mentioned already.

about how to rise in the ranks. Where we think tearing each other down and blowing our own horn is the path to the top, Jesus teaches us that no, in fact, it's not those things. It's gentleness. So what is the gentleness that Jesus is talking about? The gentleness of bearing with the weak. Babies are a very good example, especially as new parents. Those babies will expose your lack of gentleness, the spiritual gentleness that we're talking about, that Jesus is talking about here. and it'll expose it in a week. All of your sympathy, all of your kindness, all of your willingness to bear with and go without, all of a sudden you're just like, well, I don't know what's wrong with this baby. He just needs to cry. I'm done. We don't bear with them when they're gassy, when they're teething, when they're sick. As the kids get a little older, and I'm just using children as a foil here, we lose patience with them, where we might have been patient when they were little.

And we might have said to them time and again and instructed them. As they get older, we lose patience with them. And we go away from teaching or instructing, and we come to manipulation and anger and yelling and isolation. Why? Because we lack gentleness. Or as they get older and our kids come to us, and by God's grace, they have some knowledge of their own sins, and they come to us and they say, Daddy, I'm sorry. And we say, no, no. There's no forgiveness for that. I'm mad at you. Which one of us hasn't felt that? What about when we have to sacrifice for our children? Sacrifice for others. And the sort of sacrifice that means you're not delaying getting what you want. You're saying, I will not have what I want so that they can have this. This is the type of gentleness that Jesus is speaking about. In the Sermon on the Mount, later he gives us a number of examples of this sort of gentleness. If a man strikes you on the cheek, do what? What does gentleness demand that you do?

turn the other cheek. If you're to carry a man's cross a mile, do what? Carry it too. If a man steals your shirt, give him your cloak also. Do you realize how spiritual those commands are? How nothing in you wants to do those very things. But I'll ask you, let's take being struck on the cheek, okay? I'll use myself as an example, okay? Most people, if they thought of hitting me, literally hitting me, they probably wouldn't do it. Why? Why would you decide as you look at me that hitting me might not be a good idea? Because I'm bigger than you. And probably that I could hit harder than you. Coming back, right? The Bierbauers moved in yesterday and my kids came home. They're like, Mr. Bierbauer is strong. He's the strongest guy ever. He can pick up a piano all by himself. It took four other men. So he has this same thing going on. This is what my kids said about you. Strength of two men. And enough to tease the other men. Why you got to slow down?

So you might look at Eric, you might look at me, and you might say, those aren't guys I want to hit. But the thing is, over the course of the ministry, I've never, at least in my memory, actually been hit in the face. But I have been hit. I have taken blows from you. And I've learned not to strike back. And I've taught the elders and told them, I said, when people get angry at you and they hit you, your first job is to absorb the blow and not to swing back. They may be angry at you and they may accuse you and they may be lying while they do it. Your job is to absorb the blow and then to come back and to love them. And all I'm trying to teach them, and by extension you, is gentleness. And I realize how hard it is for me to do that because I'll tell you, if I even think you're going to hit me, my inclination is to hit you first. This is the sort of gentleness that Jesus is speaking about here, that when you're sinned against, you would be merciful, that you'd be kind, that you'd be gentle with those

who are causing you the pain. At the end of the Beatitudes, when he's talking about persecution at the very end, sort of as a summary statement of all of this, rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is all I'm describing to you, using myself or the elders as an example. When we get hit by you, our job is to be gentle and not to strike back, to prove, as Peter says, To be kind and to be gentle among you as nursing mothers are with their babies. That's the sort of gentleness that Jesus is talking about here. These are the means by which you will inherit the earth. So I'll ask you, when someone takes a swing at Daniel and they think he's got something wrong and did this thing and Daniel absorbs it and Daniel's kind and he's gentle and he's gracious, what effect does that have on the one who swung at him?

Say it again. Yeah, a gentle word, right? A harsh word stirs up strife, but a gentle word turns away wrath. It creates trust and affection. That's how you inherit the earth. Now, it's not easy, but the truth is being a Christian is not easy because to be a Christian is to become something different than what you are by nature. And so when I say, when someone's nasty to you, when your spouse is nasty to you, when your brother's nasty to you, to be gentle in response, it's something that God has to give us. We have no strength in ourselves to do it. Watch your kids. What do they do when someone shoves them or takes their toy? Immediately, scream, holler, yell, snatch back, hit, push. Immediately they have this response that's not gentle. Do we just outgrow that with time?

Oh, I'm 20 now. Oh, I'm 30. Oh, I'm 40. Oh, I'm 15. I don't have that. We don't outgrow those impulses. We need God to change us, those impulses in us. And so an example I gave of Daniel absorbing in gentleness the attack that comes against him and saying it creates love, trust, affection, respect, honor. You might still be sitting here thinking and going, Yeah, that's a nice example, but that's not how it really works in the real world. Really, if you want power, if you want influence, if you want people to listen to you, you have to fight for it. You have to do the things. You have to meet power with power. That's the only way to overcome it. What I'd say is your judgment is bad. Your assessment is wrong.

I'd like to read to you all of Psalm 37, but for the sake of time, I'm going to just read to you a couple of excerpts from it. This whole Psalm has to do with the tensions that we feel when we look and we see the evil or the wicked getting their way and seeming to prosper while we're sitting here suffering, trying to do the right things. This is what Psalm 37 does. It takes us and brings into focus the effect of gentleness in God's hand and agency in it. At the beginning of the Psalm, David tells us, Do not fret because of evildoers. What does it mean to fret? Worry. Get angry. You know, kind of churn. Do not fret because of evildoers. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers. And so you realize at the very beginning, David's dealing with what we are inclined to do when we see people doing well by wicked means. Do not fret because of evildoers. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade.

But we get impatient. It's taking too long. My husband hasn't figured it out. My children aren't obeying. The midterm elections didn't go the way I hoped. What is it? We get impatient. In verse 7, he says, Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way. Speaking of the evil man, do not fret because of him who prospers in the way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret. It leads only to evildoing, for evildoers will be cut off. But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. This is the psalm that Jesus is quoting from. In verse 22, it says, blessed by him will inherit the land, but those cursed by him will be cut off. Verse 25, and this is probably one of the most helpful verses. David says, I have been young and now I am old, which is an appeal to his experience and wisdom, and it expects deference from us. I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread. In verse 34, wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land.

when the wicked are cut off, you will see it. And so to the question of, it doesn't look that way in my experience, I'd say first, you're all very young. You're all very young. And you're not students of history the way you should be. And if you are students of history, you probably haven't learned the lessons you should learn from history. It takes time to see these things. Everything in our society wants immediate returns, immediate changes, immediate results. That's not how this world works. It does take time. But when you read this psalm, the message could be summed up as, stop looking at the wicked and thinking that their way is right. The longer you do it, the more likely you will be to follow them. But in the end, they'll be washed up by the Lord and the righteous, the gentle, the meek will be left and will inherit the land.

This is the same problem, this objection. Well, it's not what I see. It's the same problem the Israelites had when they went into the land of Canaan originally. They sent in the spies. What did all the spies come back and say? They're too big and they're too strong. We can't overcome. There's no way we're going to inherit this land. Are you kidding me? Because they looked with their eyes. And the two men, the faithful men, what did they say? Well, first, they didn't deny what the other men had saw. They didn't say, oh, they weren't that big. I think we can take them. What were you saying?

What's that? Yeah, they said, the Lord will help us. The Lord will go with us. So do we have faith like those men, like Joshua and like Caleb, who can look and say, you know what? The Lord will go with us. The Lord will help us. The Lord will sustain us and he'll provide for us. Or do you look and you say, no, no, my experience, my perceptions, they're the ordering principle. If you do, what you've done is set yourself above. the Bible, and above Scripture against God himself and saying, I know how to read the times and predict the future better than the one who is the author of time. If you look around and you think, it's not going the way I think it should, it's not going the way the Bible, you know, I'm not inheriting the earth the way that I think I should, what you should do is presume the problem is with you, that your judgment is bad, that it's short-sighted, that really what you're dealing with is jealous envy.

I said at the beginning of our sermon, we won't receive all of the blessings in this life. So when we see the wicked prosper and when we see the righteous suffer for a time, we should rejoice, just like Jesus says at the end of this section of the Sermon on the Mount, because our treasure in heaven is great. Our reward, our blessing stored up for us is great. Do you know why I also think God keeps his blessings away from us in this passage or in this life? Because it produces. The very next thing. Clay, can you switch the slide to number seven or to the next one? It says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is what we'll talk about next week. But if you will pursue gentleness, one of the things that will produce in you is that, that you would hunger and thirst for righteousness, that you would want God's will to be done. And so I think that the Lord keeps his blessings back from us in this world to make us hungry, to make us dissatisfied.

To stir us up, to pursue him. The gentle are the ones who will inherit the earth. Not the whole earth, but a portion, as the Lord determines. I think too often our ambitions cloud our judgments and our desires, and they do damage to our souls in the process. We determine that gentleness is not the way forward. How many husbands decide sacrifice for my wife and laying down my life is not good leadership? How many wives determine that gentle and quiet spirit, being quiet, is the way forward. I mean, every day we're deciding. If we were to judge by our actions and not our words, we'd say, yeah, I don't think that's the way to do it. Our part, our responsibility in all of this is not to seek after, I'm not giving you an instruction manual about how to get people to listen to you. That's up to the Lord. And anyone who, any man that gets moved up in responsibility, it's the Lord who does it.

Our part in this is not to seek after how might I inherit the earth. Our part is to seek after gentleness. That's what we should be thinking about. And we should see that our desire to have power and influence is the thing that keeps us from gentleness. Gentleness is not weakness. Gentleness is not an absence of strength. It's not an indifference to the world. Many strong men and many strong women are gentle. And so my point today is not to say you have to become weak to obey this passage. You have to become ambivalent to the world and what goes on in it. It's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that those who know you best can say whether you're gentle or not. And if you want to know, you can start in your own house. I assure you, your children, your spouse can tell you if you're gentle.

Or they can tell you when you're least likely to be gentle, where you struggle the most. Let them speak to it. Let your small group leaders speak to it. Receive help. As I said, our part is to desire and to seek after this, to bear with those who are weak, to do what Jesus did. You remember in Matthew, later on in our assurance of pardon today, he says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Learn from me. Why? Because I am meek, gentle, and humble in heart. And you'll find rest for your souls. In telling you to do these things, in setting before you what it means to do these things, I'm only telling you to be like Jesus. And that ought to be our heart's desire is to become more like him, to be conformed more into his image each day. Let's pray.