Continuing with Jesus’ Beatitudes we read: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
We may be offended when we first read this. To say someone is meek implies they are weak or wishy-washy, timid or indecisive. Does Jesus really mean this? No! The meekness Jesus is speaking about here is not describing someone who is weak. Nor is it to be confused with affability – someone who is just naturally nice and easy-going. Meekness in the Bible goes much deeper. It is a controlled desire to see the interests of others advanced ahead of our own.
We see it, for example, in Abraham’s decision to give Lot first choice in deciding where he would settle his family – on the infertile highlands or the fertile plains. This is the meekness Jesus is speaking about.
TRUE EXAMPLES OF MEEKNESS IN THE BIBLE
Numbers 12:3 tells us Moses was the meekest man who ever lived. In Numbers 12 we read that when his authority was under attack he refused to defend himself. He remained firm in his commitment to the Lord, waiting for Him to act. You may want to read Numbers 12.
But it is Jesus Christ himself who is the supreme example of meekness. Consider the scene when he was put to death. He was naked, exposed to the vulgar frivolity of the crowd. The soldiers taunted him: “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” The scene was vicious and degrading. Yet the extraordinary thing is we don’t hear any vindictive cursing from Jesus. Instead he prays: “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34).
The New Testament continues to stress and exemplify meekness. In 2 Corinthians 10:1 Paul the Apostle uses the example of the meekness and gentleness of Christ to explain the way he endeavored to conduct his ministry. The Corinthians had accused him of being bold in his letters, but weak and timid when he was with them. In their mind he was a weak leader.
HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND?
It’s never easy to address personal accusations without playing into the hands of critics. Whatever tone you adopt, they twist it to their own advantage. If you play it strong or weak, they will only say that you are proving their point. Paul, for his part, responded by appealing to the example of Jesus. ‘My leadership model,’ he said, ‘is the meekness and gentleness of Christ’. The timidity they accused him of was his attempt to emulate the graciousness of Christ. But this didn’t mean he didn’t say some tough things in public and on paper.
If we allow ourselves to feel the impact of all this, it is the more appalling that meekness does not characterize more of us who claim to be Christians. Too often we are more concerned with justifying ourselves than building up one another in our relationship with the Lord Jesus. And at church, we are often more committed to giving our opinion about church or its ministry than we are at reaching others with the good news of God’s gospel. Tragically, meekness has not been a mark of many of God’s people for a very long time.
If, of course, we do try to live out this quality of meekness, our highly secularized and individualistic culture laughs. Society says, ‘Get what you can: You’re a fool if you don’t!’ We’ve created a culture where every individual thinks they are at the center of the universe. This affects how we relate to the seven billion others who operate under a similar delusion.
True meekness. The truly meek see life and relationships through a new lens. ‘Poor in spirit’ they do not think more highly of themselves that they ought to, for they see themselves and everyone else as under God. When, by the grace of God we learn to think this way, we are able to relate more honorably and graciously with others around us.
Last week’s news in Sydney, Australia, carried the story of a 17-year-old being investigated for promoting Islamic extremism amongst other students at his school.
An editorial in The Weekend Australian newspaper (July 25-26) notes that this ‘coincides with the weakening of traditional religious teaching and its replacement moral relativism and insipid, postmodernist ideas’. ‘For many young people…,’ the editorial continues, ‘the language of good and evil is more convincing than arguments based on secular logic and reasoning. Some teenagers, including nominal Christians, are in a spiritual vacuum that has left them more vulnerable to Islamic radicalization and its poisonous, anti-democratic ideology. Or, to paraphrase GK Chesterton, when men stop believing in God they become capable of falling for anything.’
Rightly, authorities are concerned about this discovery in an Australian high school. Indeed, it is a development that concerns us all. Mindful of Jesus’ words that we touched on last week, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4), it is one more thing in our world for which God’s people grieve. We need Jesus’ assurance: “…for they shall be comforted.”
TRUE COMFORT
But then we ask, where is the comfort in this messed up world? We mourn our own failings and we mourn the reality that every human bears the stain of sin in their lives. We long for a world where there is justice and peace. But as we look around us we see a world where life is dominated by constant tension and conflict, a world where there are only interludes of relative peace. How can Jesus say, “…they shall be comforted?”
When we reflect on his words, “Blessed are those who mourn”, and the line of interpretation we touched on last week, we begin to see his meaning. In grieving over our own sin before God, we are comforted with the knowledge of Jesus’ complete forgiveness when we turn to him with a true and humble heart. In the words of Colossians 2:13f, the charges that stand against us have been nailed to the cross of the Christ. Jesus’ use of the future tense, shall be comforted, in his sermon point to fact that the comfort could only truly happen once his perfect sacrifice had been made. The cross of Christ perfectly brings us personal comfort and joy.
THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL
And there is more. Insofar that we mourn the lost state before God of people around us, there is the comfort that God uses the declaration of his gospel to bring about change in the lives of men and women and young people. Paul the Apostle writes that the gospel, the word of the truth, has come to you,… in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing (Colossians 1:5-6). Yet, too often our problem is that we don’t experience God’s comfort now because we have been silenced by the voices around us. And we fear the gospel will not work in others’ lives.
There is another layer in the comfort that Jesus promises: the comfort that history is moving to an end point, a day when Christ will be revealed in all his might and majesty, dominion and power. Our relationship with God, hidden now in Christ, will be revealed.
Before you go to bed this evening why not read Jesus’ words afresh: “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted”. You may want to kneel beside your bed and open your heart to God. Ask him for forgiveness for yourself and your family, your friends and colleagues. When we put our lives in Jesus’ hands his promise of comfortrings true.
“Go into all the world, and make disciples,” Jesus said. “Lo I am with you always.” He wants to turn the night of grief into the day of comfort and joy. His death has made it possible.
The world loves to laugh. Comedians will always have an audience. People don’t like kill-joys who ruin the party. Yet Jesus says, “” (Matt 5:4). He doesn’t mean that his people are always to be gloomy or morose. Still less is he saying that Christians are to wallow in self-pity.
Jesus has in mind the grief we experience, not just when we lose a loved one (though that is here), but when we become aware of the purity of God and the naked reality of the dark side of our nature. Isaiah the prophet was aware of this when he saw a vision of the glory of God in the temple. ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ the angels sang. Isaiah despaired: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips’ (Isaiah 6:5).
It is the cry of someone who thinks they are good enough for God and then discovers they are not. None of us is. Malcolm Muggeridge, one-time editor of Punch, wrote: ‘The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, but the most empirically verifiable.’ Paul the Apostle said: Who will rescue me from this body of death?
The last recorded words of one of the criminals crucified beside Jesus, echo the grief that Jesus is talking about in this beatitude. “Don’t you fear God?” he said to his colleague. “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve….” Turning to Jesus he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
This man was no saint; he didn’t even pretend to be good. Something about Jesus seems to have struck him. Perhaps it was the stark contrast between Jesus’ prayer for his tormentors and the bitter hostility of his friend. He knew Jesus was innocent: “This man has done nothing wrong,” he said. This man feared God sufficiently to recognize his need.
Jesus also had in mind another dimension of mourning in Mt 5:4: grief for the world’s sin. There are times when we are deeply saddened by the sin of the world. We read the news headlines; we hear of the struggles of family and friends. We are aware of the injustice, the cruelty, the selfishness of men and women towards others, and we weep.
JESUS WEPT
Often we are content to condemn the perpetrators. It’s a natural response. But Jesus has in mind another kind of response which he himself exemplified. He wept at the godlessness of people’s lives and what that meant. It’s easy to agree with Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 where he condemns the hypocrisy of the Jewish theologians and the Pharisees. But we stop short of joining him in weeping over the city (Luke 19:41ff).
Down through the ages God’s people have wept at the plight of men and women trapped in the dark little prison of their own ego. Calvin did. So too did George Whitfield and John Wesley, John Newton, William Wilberforce, and the Earl of Shaftesbury.
God’s people are realists. We understand that death is a reality to be faced. We know that sin is unspeakably ugly and black in the light of God’s purity. We also know that eternity exists and everyone of us is rushing towards it. And we understand that God not only exists but has spoken, revealing in his Word the alternatives that will come to pass — life or death, pardon or condemnation, heaven or hell.
‘My followers,’ says Jesus in Matt 5:4, ‘mourn because of the sins and blasphemies of the nation; mourn because of the erosion of the very concept of truth. They mourn over the greed, the cynicism, the lack of compassion evident everywhere. They even mourn there are so few who mourn’.
Have you ever noticed on television documentaries about the past, the sighs of interest, even pleasure, that people express? It might be a program about a long-forgotten people or an ancient city. It might be the revelation of the value of a work of art or a letter found in the attic. Significant ruins and long-forgotten events of the past, family history and uncovered personal treasures, give people pleasure and joy. It gives them a sense of being caught up in the timeless, even the eternal. It gives them a sense of identity and satisfaction. Sometimes it is as though they have found life’s holy grail.
It is into our world with its moments of self-satisfaction and self-sufficiency that Jesus speaks his first recorded words in Matthew’s Gospel: Blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3).
ECONOMIC OR HEART CONDITION
With his words the poor in spirit he is not referring simply to the financially or materially poor. His disciples weren’t destitute. While they weren’t necessarily millionaires, they certainly weren’t hard up. Peter and his brother conducted a fishing business, and Matthew (Levi) had sufficient funds to host a large dinner party (Luke 5:29).
The poor. In Old Testament times God’s people were often referred to as ‘the poor’, because they were economically distressed. Sometimes this was caused by oppression, as we see in Isaiah 3:15: What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? declares the Lord God of hosts. At other times poor refers to the powerless in society, as we read in Job 20:19: For he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build. Furthermore, various Hebrew words for poor can mean ‘lowly’ or ‘humble’ as in Proverbs 16:19: It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.
POOR IN SPIRIT
Poor in spirit. However, two words in particular that we find in Isaiah anticipate Jesus’ reference to the poor in spirit. In Isaiah 66:2 we read: Thus says the Lord,… But this is the one to whom I will look: he or she who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
Putting these ideas together, Jesus’ words Blessed are the poor in spirit are a reference to a poverty of spirit that acknowledges spiritual bankruptcy. It is our honest recognition that we are unworthy of God; our acknowledgement that our world-view and life-style all too often reflect the converse of the first commandment that says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. We have set up alternate gods of our own devices to worship: money, sex, power.
Poverty of spirit is the deepest form of repentance, exemplified by the guilty publican in the story Jesus told – the publican who prayed from the back of the Temple: God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Poverty of spirit is being honest with God about ourselves. It is the admission of our impotence without him in our lives.
WHAT IS JESUS CALLING FOR?
What Jesus is calling for is a profound change in our relationship with him and in our lifestyle. But we will only want to do this if we believe that Jesus is the transcendent king.
Simon Peter, when he was confronted by Jesus’ power and purity, knew that a deep gulf existed between himself and Jesus: Depart from me, Lord, he said, for I am a sinful man (Luke 5:8). Matthew (Levi), for his part, knew there was more to life than money. Called to follow Jesus he handed over the tax office to others, and obeyed.
To anyone who sees how impoverished they are before the One who transcends all things, Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit…
We don’t remember great leaders simply for who they were or what they did, but also for the things they said. George Washington’s Inaugural speech as president and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, come to mind. So does Winston Churchill’s speech in May 1940: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat; and his stirring and challenging words the following month: ‘We will fight on the beaches… We will never surrender …’
BEATITUDES
The greatest speech?What we often overlook is that the speech of Jesus of Nazareth known as the Sermon on the Mount, is generally regarded as one of the finest speeches ever.
Significantly, Matthew has not recorded any words of Jesus before his ‘Sermon on the Mount’ thus giving it greater weight. In the previous chapters (1-4) Matthew develops one vital theme: Jesus is God’s long-promised Messiah. Jesus, we find, stands in the line of the great kings of Israel: he is a descendent of the greatest of all Israel’s kings, King David (1:1). Significantly, foreigners called the Magi, come and worship him as king (2:1-6). At his baptism (3:14-17), Jesus is called God’s ‘Son’, a title uniquely reserved for the kings of Israel (Psalm 2). By the time we get to the end of Matthew 4, we learn that people have come to hear Jesus from every corner of the vast empire that David and Solomon had ruled in the golden age of Israel’s history (4:23-25).
Now in chapter 5 Matthew introduces us to the first words of the king – what we might call ‘The King’s Speech’. Blessed are the poor in spirit,…Jesus began. How easy it is to say these words. Yet as we will see over the coming weeks, they are challenging and disturbing.
What does it mean to be ‘blessed’?‘Happy’ is a poor substitute. Those who are blessed will generally be profoundly happy, but blessedness cannot be reduced to happiness. To be ‘blessed’ means to be approved, or to find approval. When God blesses us he is approving us.
JESUS’ CHALLENGE TO US
Jesus’ first words challenge us to ask, ‘Whose blessing do I want more – other people’s or God’s?’ Do we covet more the blessing of family or friends or of a superior at work? Jesus wants us to see that God’s blessing is worth infinitely more than anything else. If we agree with him, then his beatitudes speak to us very personally and very deeply.
One significant feature is that the first and last beatitudes promise the same reward. The first is: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The last is: Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.To begin and end with the same expression is called an ‘inclusion’. Everything that stands between the two can be included under the one theme – here, the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus’ Beatitudesset out the standards that he, as the king, expects of his people. They serve to introduce the Sermon on the Mount which, taken as a whole, sets out what we might call the constitution of God’s kingdom. Jesus is not interested in people who live a veneer of holy living. He is committed to seeing lives of integrity – integrity in the home, in all our relationships, in the world of commerce and on the field of play, in completing tax returns and in the use of the internet, in the movies we watch and the magazines we devour.
When, by God’s grace we work at living out Jesus’ words, then we discover God’s blessing.
