Introduction:
Who Are the "Meek"? (Matthew 5:5)
Forsaking all Self-interest to the Will of God for the Sake of others .Philippians 2:3-8 - Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Why Are We Congratulating the Meek?
How Do I Cultivate Meekness? (Psalm 37:1-11)
- You Don't Fret over the wicked or the state of the world.
- You Wholly Depend on God to Deal with Wrongdoers .
- You Wholly Depend on God for Vindication .
- You Ask God to remember those opposed to you.
- You Pray for pportunities to be Trained and Tested .
Congratulations to the poor in spirit, you have the kingdom of heaven!
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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All right, Matthew chapter 5, are you there? I feel special, I got fresh balloons.
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I think the little kids took all the other ones.
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All right, Matthew chapter 5, let's read there. We'll start at verse 1.
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"Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied 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 are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So we're in week three of our celebration of the Beatitudes and today we are kicking off Meek Week. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
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Okay, okay, some of you, some of you are enthused, but maybe we don't seem to be too excited to be meek. Are you not enthused about the next step in our progression through the Beatitudes? I mean, why not? Well, because it's not something we aspire to, is it? Our human nature recoils at the thought of This is one of those uncomfortable verses in Scripture that we tend to pass over.
02:20-02:47
Or if we do dwell on it, we find the idea of meekness so unappealing that we just push it away. That's because of what we think meekness means. We think meek people are timid, they're weaklings, they're cowards, they're pantywaists, they're sissies, wussies, simps, and pusillanimous pipsqueaks. Meekness is for the timid sheeple.
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When I think of meek, I think of piglet.
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Yeah, the word has negative associations in our culture. No one, no one rolls out of bed in the morning thinking, "Today's the day! Today I'm going to be more meek! Carpe piglet!" No, no, we don't do that. But we're told right here in verse 3, did I get that right?
03:16-04:10
Verse 3? Yeah, no, verse 5, I'm sorry. Verse 5, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." We're told that being meek is a good thing. Followers of Jesus ought to be meek because He is meek. He says in Matthew 11 29, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for i am gentle that is meek and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls so we must figure out what it means sometimes we're told well meekness is not weakness we hear this a lot in the church we we must soothe the ego with the reminder that if you're meek it doesn't mean you're weak god doesn't expect you Of course not. So let's just stop right there and not pursue this meekness thing too much further.
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Other times we're told that the Greek word "praos" that is translated as meek really means "strength under control." You like that better than "meekness isn't weakness"? I do. In fact, there are a lot of writers who say that in ancient Greece, Prous described a horse trained for battle. One writer put it this way, "Wild stallions were brought down from the mountains and broken for riding. Some were used to pull wagons, some were raced, and the best were trained for warfare.
04:50-06:20
They retained their fierce spirit, courage, and power, but were disciplined to respond to the slightest nudge or pressure of the rider's leg. They could gallop into battle at 35 miles an hour and come to a sliding stop at a word. They were not frightened by arrows, spears, or torches. Then they were said to be meeked. To be meeked was to be taken from a state of wild rebellion and made completely loyal to and dependent upon one's master. Another metaphor for meekness is an iron fist and a velvet glove. You know, great strength covered with a kind and humble exterior. We like that image, don't we? It conjures up notions that I'm kind, I do good to everyone, but push me too far, antagonize me too much, and I'm gonna to be within my rights to let you have it. Yeah, I can be as humble as the best of them, but I got something in reserve. I got my ace in the hole that I can play when it's called for. Yeah, we like these metaphors, don't we? A lot of guys here right now are thinking themselves, "Yeah, yeah, I'm comfortable with those descriptions of meekness. I can work with those." Just now skip down to the part where you tell me how to become meek, wrap it up with a bow, and I get to go on with my day off.
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Except none of those metaphors is any more true or accurate a meaning of meek than the idea of being a sissy boy. Meekness has nothing to do with physical or moral strength or courage.
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Biblically, meekness has nothing to do with tamed horses, because Jesus isn't a tamed horse.
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He's the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah, and we aren't tamed horses either.
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We're his sheep and the people of his pasture. We need to live accordingly.
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I think I might be stepping on some toes this morning, so this would be a good time to pray.
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If you'd pray for me that I would faithfully preach God's Word, And I'll pray for you that you receive it.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, your Word is truth.
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I pray that your Word would penetrate us to the joints and marrow, That you would plant your word deeply in us.
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That you would rattle our cages. That you would shake us up. That you would make us meek like our Savior Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.
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So who are the meek? Why does meekness matter?
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The opening of this series, Pastor Jeff explained that the Beatitudes are like a ladder or a series of steps. They're all connected and one leads to the next.
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So far we've learned that we are poor in spirit. As Pastor Jeff said in week one, being poor in spirit is our default setting as sinners. And pride keeps us from recognizing it. We need the Holy Spirit to illuminate our true condition and bring us to confession and repentance. Then last Sunday we learned that we must mourn over our sin and the wrong that we've done. So step one, what we are is spiritually bankrupt. Step two, what we must experience, that is godly sorrow. And now step three, what we must be, meek. Before we define it, we're going to take a moment to understand why this step is crucial and why we can't skip it.
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If we consider the world from the Bible's standpoint, that is a biblical we understand that all wrongdoing, wickedness, and injustice is due to sin.
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We can't expect fallen human beings to do what is right and obey the commands of God. We know the world is broken. There's evil and injustice at every turn, and we object to injustice across society. And we usually we point our finger at other people and identify them as the cause of most, if not all, of the So we look to our leaders at the local and the state and the national level to fix things. We want them to sweep into power, restore sanity and order. We also object to injustice in our own lives. It isn't fair. It's been uttered by every one of us at some point in our lives. We get upset when people say or do things that that hurt us or our families our friends our neighbors we want we want justice we want things to be made right and we long for righteousness the next beatitude anticipates this actually Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness I'm not trying to steal Jeff's thunder from neck for next week but but we're on a ladder remember we can't really hunger and thirst for righteousness until we deal with being meek. Meekness is a prerequisite to truly hungering and thirsting for righteousness. But our tendency is we go from mourning over the wrong we've done straight to hungering and thirsting for righteousness. This is actually natural. We think to ourselves, "Well, I broke it and now I got to fix it," or "Jesus has done great things for me in my salvation and and I want to do great things for him now." You know, those are all admirable thoughts and Jesus recognizes this, but it is a proud desire to do right and fix things. Even though we have an incomplete understanding of righteousness, it is good to hunger and thirst for righteousness, but our perceptions of right and wrong are often subjective based on personal experience and tainted by pride. And if we don't deal with our pride first, our efforts to set things right can and will go sideways. After all, how does a person who's been wrong typically seek justice? It's payback time.
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It's time for revenge. It's time for retaliation, retribution. Those are all people try to right wrongs. And if our hunger and thirst for righteousness is not grounded in meekness, and we try to do right things from a place of pride, our righteous deeds will be like filthy rags, and we will expose Jesus and the gospel to contempt for the wrong reasons. Because, beloved, we're going to encounter people who don't appreciate our dedication to the gospel and biblical righteousness. We know they have very different ideas about what constitutes justice and righteousness and they're going to push back with mocking and insults and attacks and persecution. And if we don't have a solid understanding of meekness, we may respond in kind and our efforts to bring about righteousness will look like retaliation, retribution, and revenge. If we fail to become meek any good we might do will look no different from the world's methods of handling problems we will act just like everyone else in the name of Jesus will be brought into disrepute so we have to firmly understand meekness so what does meekness really mean well as I said the Greek word is prowse and and it's translated variously as meek, gentle, humble, and considerate.
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It is described as the positive moral quality of having a mild disposition and dealing with people in a kind manner with humility and consideration. A meek person isn't loud, boastful, easily angered or pushing. Why a meek person is just nice and kind. Is that it? Is that all there is to it? It's not even the half of it. Biblically, meekness is an outlook, it's an attitude, it's a disposition, if you will, of the heart and mind toward God and other people that's founded on our relationship with God and our trust in Him. It is a disposition that remains fixed regardless of what God brings our way, what people do, what events transpire, and whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. So I've got some definitions here regarding God. Whoa, that didn't even didn't fit, did it?
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All right, but anyway, regarding God, the meek are disposed to accept all of God's dealings with them as good, and this disposition is founded on trust in God's character, omniscience, and omnipresence. The meek person is not occupied with self or even self-preservation, but rather the glory of God first, and then the well-being of others. All right, so that's the vertical regarding God.
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Regarding people, the meek are disposed to treat others considerately with honor and respect. A meek person is not easily provoked, disturbed, or angered, and when wronged, the meek person responds with humility and relies wholly on God for defense, deliverance, and justification instead of taking matters into one's own hands. What do you think Pastor Taylor? Should I should I get that down to one sentence? Would it be better to have this in one sentence? That's that's I acknowledge that's all pretty long. You might say one sentence, "Love the Lord your God with your whole self and love your neighbor as yourself." That's pretty familiar to us, isn't it? But I thought we need to get to some really granular level. We need to put this under a microscope. Here's meekness in one sentence. Meekness is forsaking all self-interest to the will of God for the sake of others. Forsaking all self- interest to the will of God for the sake of others. You might say that poor in spirit was our old default setting. Meekness is to be our new default setting in Christ Jesus. Note that meekness has nothing to do with strength or weakness, fortitude or timidity, courage or cowardice, or anything else that we commonly associate with meekness or our opposition to it. It has everything to do with our estimation of God and his providential care. This meekness is not something we can attain by our own effort. Strength under control or the iron fist and velvet glove, those qualities might be attained by human ability. That's why we like them. We can do it ourselves. But you know in the wild horse analogy, the horse's strength has been harnessed. The horse has been trained, not transformed. But to be this, to be this, this is impossible to do apart from the Holy Spirit's transformational renewing of our minds.
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So what does meekness look like? True meekness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit that grows out of dependence on God. See Galatians 5 23. You could say that our meekness quotient is directly proportional to our dependence on God. So Joseph, who despite being sold into slavery by his brothers, served God and his masters faithfully and looked to God to vindicate him. When his brothers came into Egypt looking for food, he had it in his power to abuse and mistreat them.
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It's payback time. That's not what Joseph did. Instead, he showed them mercy and took actions that ultimately brought about confession and forgiveness and led to reconciliation and his family's deliverance. Meekness looks like Moses who is meeker than anyone on the whole face of the earth. When God said he was going to wipe out all the people because of their idolatry with the golden calf and start over with Moses, Moses said, "Really? You'd do that for me, God? Well, Now that might set your plans back a little bit, but hey, if you want to start all over with me, that's fine with me.
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I'm already tired of leading these miserable, complaining people around the wilderness.
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No, that's not what Moses said.
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No, Moses interceded for the people and called upon God to remember his covenants and his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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of Moses's meek intercession, the Lord relented from the disaster that he spoke about bringing on all the people. You see in the examples of Joseph and Moses, we see men who had the ability to act in their own self-interest, but they did not.
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They had God's favor and power and resources backing them up, but they forsook those resources for the glory of God. They put the will of God before their own self-interest for the sake of others. Meekness looks like the Apostle Paul when he was wronged and stoned and beaten, imprisoned, maligned, and persecuted. How many times did he fight back? Shout it out if you know. How many times did he fight back? How many times did he carry out retaliation and retribution. Anybody you know? And how many times did he round up all the believers for street fights with the Jews and the Gentiles? Zero. You see, Paul's meekness can be summarized in a comment he made to Timothy. "Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds." Meekness looks like Jesus because he's meekness personified. Remember when Jesus was arrested, Peter, who was not being meek, lashed out with a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant and Jesus said essentially, "Enough, enough, Peter. This isn't how we fight. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels." Jesus was going into battle but as a meek lamb and it looked unlike any combat the world has ever seen. What does meekness look like in a disciple? Well in Philippians 2 verses 3 through 8 Paul points us to the meek Lamb of God and he says "do from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
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Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a slave. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. You see, Jesus gave up his self-interest and submitted to the Father's will for our sake. Defending himself with 12 legions of angels would not have resulted in our salvation, but his meek submission to his father's will did. So now that we have a biblical definition of meekness and a few examples of what it looks like, why are we congratulating the meek? Because they will inherit the whole earth. Inheriting the land is a God promised to give the land that Abraham could see to him and his offspring forever. Throughout the Old Testament we read about the land which I'm giving you, the land which I'm bringing you into, the land that I'm giving you for an inheritance. There are at least a hundred and seventy instances where God unconditionally promises he will give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's offspring the land of Canaan. At least 55 times he confirms the promised gift with an oath, and 12 times he states that the covenant is everlasting. But here in verse 5, Jesus promises the whole earth. This is a future promise as well as a right now promise. We know that right now the whole earth belongs to God.
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The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, according to Psalm 24. So it's his and he can do whatever he wants with it. In fact, in the beginning he gave humanity dominion over the whole earth according to Genesis 1, but our ability to exercise that dominion was corrupted by the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. It was necessary therefore for Jesus to redeem it through his sacrifice and then give it to his people as an inheritance. So when do we get this inheritance? We now or do we get it later? The answer is yes. If you're a disciple of Jesus, if you're in Christ, you have inherited the earth now because everything that belongs to Christ belongs to you. What is his is yours and you will receive the earth to come because Christ is making all things new including a new earth.
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but but you cannot skip over meekness you only inherit the earth if you are a meek disciple of Christ and it's at this point we run into something of a stumbling block this reward sounds great but there's something nagging there's something you can't quite put your finger on some idea about meekness that is troubling you. Let's go back to the definition of meekness again. Forsaking all self-interest to the will of God for the sake of others. Our problem is we do not trust God enough to be meek. The reason little profound spiritual growth occurs in our lives is because we refuse to be meek. Our hearts are not fully with God, instead of depending on God, we act primarily out of pride and fear. We don't embrace meekness because we're afraid God won't take care of us in all things.
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So instead of depending on God for all things, we operate from a place of pride.
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We subscribe to "God helps those who help themselves" school of theology. As the old song says, "God bless the child that's got his own." On the one hand we say, "I believe in God. I believe he'll take care of me." But on the other we think and act along the line of self-sufficiency. We look out for number one first. Why do we do this? Why do we not fully trust in and depend on God? Because of what our I see and what our hearts have experienced. We see horrible things happening throughout history and in the world around us. We ask, "Where was God when those things were happening? People have done bad things to me and I've been deeply hurt. Why didn't God stop that from happening?" We suffer a great deal from death and loss. Why did my parent die? Why was my child taken from me? Why did I lose my job? Why do I have this terrible disease? Why was I in that terrible accident that left me maimed? We think it's strange that we suffer disappointment, pain, and hardship when we are children of God. Wasn't I supposed to be set free from those things when I believed in Jesus? At least, weren't those things supposed to decrease? We think it's strange that we suffer, but we serve a suffering Christ. My aim is not to revisit the recent series on Job and what we learned about suffering and the sovereignty of God there. My aim is to point out that we make our suffering a barrier to fully depending on God. We are afraid that meekness will only lead to more suffering. We will lose out what we need to live. We will fall prey to the wicked, will be misused and abused. We don't want to be victims. We don't want to be the world's designated doormats. By our thoughts and actions we demonstrate that we are not confident that God will do what he promises. Like the Israelites in Elijah's time who tried to cover all the religious bases by worshiping Yahweh as well as Baal and other gods.
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We are afraid to fully depend on the Lord and as a result we go limping back and forth between self-effort and God, failing to realize that A) we're even doing so and B) the consequences of such wavering. I'm going to make what might seem like a brief detour here, but it illustrates the consequences of rejecting complete dependence on God and seeking one's own way in the world.
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Remember in Genesis 1 we had the whole earth and then we lost it in the fall?
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Well, ever since people have been trying to get it back. In Genesis 10 we read about a guy named Nimrod. You might laugh, but Nimrod was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. You might think, "Mighty hunter before the Lord? That's a compliment. That's a sign of God's approval." It's not. It's a description of self-sufficiency and independence, and built the cities of Babel and Nineveh, two empires that in the future would torment Israel. It's likely that Nimrod is the one who led the people to glorify themselves by building the Tower of Babel, and ever since God threw all the people there into confusion, human beings have sought to build their own version of Babylon and to get what they can for themselves. Human history is a seeking to conquer the earth. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the British and other European empires, even the American Empire, have all sought self-glorification and dominion at the cost of great destruction and millions upon millions of people perishing through war and starvation, disease and genocide and unspeakable cruelty, and not one of them ever gained or possessed the whole earth.
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We are born into this wild and reckless world and we come to believe that the only way to survive is to look out for number one. We go about staking our own little claims on the earth, in building our own little empires, and striving to make our own names great.
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and what wreckage we have left in our own wakes. None of us is anywhere close to gaining the whole world, but we are very much in danger of forfeiting our souls. But then we hear a still small voice, "Come to me. Come to me, you who are poor in spirit. Come to me and mourn over the sin and pride that has caused so much devastation and be meek. Be the opposite of all the sinful things you have ever been. As much as we embrace the appeal of salvation though we hesitate at meekness. We turn back at meekness because we know how the world works and we trust more in what we see than we do in God's promises.
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We must learn how Jesus works. We must push past the barriers of fear and pride that lead to self-preservation and go all in, depending on Jesus, if we're going to meekly inherit the earth. Ironically, when we have Jesus, the things of this world begin to lose significance. The things of earth will grow strangely dim, as the hymn says. Pastor Jeff is going to elaborate on this more next week, but this morning we should recognize that when we become meek, we stop striving and clawing for a little patch of dirt and a smidgen of self-esteem, and we inherit everything. We inherit the whole earth.
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All right, if you're persuaded that meekness is essential for a disciple of Jesus and that the reward for meekness is great, you want to know how do I cultivate meekness? How do I grow in the fruit of this Spirit?
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Turn to Psalm 37. You want to look in your Bibles. Tom, turn to Psalm 37. We're going to do something a little different this morning. I'd like to read through this responsibly, verses 1 through 11. I'll read the odd-numbered verses and I ask you to read the even-numbered verses.
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All right, well, if you have your Bibles, please open your Bibles. I'll start at verse 1. "Fret not yourself because of evil doers. Be not envious of wrongdoers, For they will fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Self in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your injustice as the noonday. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
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Fret not yourself, it tends only to evil. For the evildoer shall be cut off, but "But those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
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"In just a little while, the wicked will be no more.
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"Though you look carefully at his place, "he will not be there.
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"But the meek shall inherit the land "and delight themselves in abundant peace." All right, thank you.
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That's good, thank you.
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All right, so number one.
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read it all later read it all later it's it is it is an excellent song so number one how to cultivate meekness you don't fret over the wicked or the state of the world three times the psalmist says do not fret it is don't worry don't be anxious about what is going on around you or about what the wicked are doing Now I'm sure there was no one here fretting about people and things the past four years. Am I right? Yeah indeed there was much to fret about but we shouldn't have been fretting. Why not? Because the Psalm says, "Because fretting yourself tends only to evil. It leads us to say and do things that are unmeek." And right now you don't have to dig too deep into the news or social media to see that people are completely losing their minds over the new political situation.
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Never in my life would I have imagined that some of my family members and friends could be so angry and swear the way that they do. This is fretting on steroids. We're seeing fretting dialed up to 11. But what about us? In past time did you spew venom and anger and unkind words out of a fretful spirit?
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Are you doing it now in response to people who think differently than you?
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Or maybe you fret silently. You don't lash out, but you do worry incessantly.
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You're anxious all the time about many things. Beloved, we are called to depend on God alone. So do not fret, put away anger and wrath, lest you make your faith in Christ appear fraudulent. What is the remedy to fretting? The remedy is you wholly depend on God to deal with wrongdoers. You must have full confidence in the Lord that he is taking care of you in good times, in sorrow, in success, and in disappointment.
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Look at what the psalmist says.
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Trust in the Lord, delight yourself in the Lord, commit your way to the Lord, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
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You have believed in Him for salvation.
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Do you not believe He is a good Father who will care for you and shelter you?
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You have trusted in the Lamb of God to save your soul.
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you not depend on the Lion of Judah to defend you?
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Depend on the Lord to act in your behalf and he will give you right desires. He will vindicate you and he and he alone will deal with the wicked. He will bring them to account in this life and in the life to come. The wicked will be cut off and be no more but those who wait on the Lord shall inherit the land and we know it means the whole earth. Yes, the meek, that'll be you, shall inherit the whole earth and delight themselves. Delight yourselves in abundant peace. Next, the meek wholly depend on God for vindication. By this I mean you patiently wait for God to prove you right and you will, and he will, I mean if you proceed from a place of meekness. We so often want to assert ourselves and justify ourselves. I know I'm right. But once again, the the morass of social media gives ample evidence of people verbally assaulting others and asserting their own point of view is correct. But that should not be us, beloved. The meek looks to God to bring forth their righteousness as the light and their justice as the noonday. Next, you ask God to remember those opposed to you. The psalmist says to trust in the Lord and he will act, and also to refrain from anger and forsake wrath. When we've been hurt or someone is opposing us, we should ask God to remember them. Now when the Bible says God remembers, it doesn't mean he forgot to do something. It means he's about to take action. Therefore, to ask God to remember those who've harmed you or insulted you or taken something from you is to ask him to take appropriate action from his viewpoint, not yours, and in a way that will give him great glory and do the most good for you and for those opposed to you.
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Finally, you pray for opportunities to be trained and tested in meekness. If you're going to bear the fruit of meekness, you need to have your buttons pushed from time to time. How will you ever know if you're becoming meek if you aren't confronted with situations in which you have a choice to a) behave proudly, blow your top, deny the Lord and ruin your good confession, or b) respond meekly with humility and grace and display your complete confidence in the Lord to take care of you. This seems like a dangerous prayer, but I assure you it is better to be prayed up about it, to ask for the Lord's help ahead of time and for skill level appropriate training in meekness. Then it is to be confronted out of the blue with a situation in which you fail miserably. The best way to cultivate the fruit of meekness is to prepare and practice so that when you're in the orchard of life and the game isn't going your way, you'll be ready with the ripe fruit of meekness. How's All right, so if our worship team will come back to the stage, we'll look at what we've learned this morning.
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We've learned that meekness is not what we imagined it to be, or even what we would like it to be.
42:10-42:15
We've learned that real meekness is a fruit of the Spirit, born out of total dependence on God.
42:17-42:22
we've learned that our resistance to meekness reveals that we don't fully trust God.
42:24-42:58
And that realization has brought deep conviction to your heart. But it's time to stop wavering and to depend fully on God for his providential care in all of life and to demonstrate to others the fruit of meekness that grows from such dependence. If you will make this commitment, If you will get out of bed tomorrow morning and say, "Today's the day I start becoming meek," then congratulations, beloved. The earth and everything in it is yours in Jesus Christ.
43:00-43:18
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, our Lord and our God, make us meek. Make us like our Savior, Jesus Christ, so that we can be like Him in all things of life to all people. We pray in His great name. Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Matthew 5:5 & Psalm 37:1-11
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why do we find unbiblical definitions of meekness either unappealing (e.g., it’s weakness) or more appealing (e.g., it’s strength under control) than the definition presented during the message?
Do you find the definition presented during the message unappealing? If yes, why? Utilizing Philippians 2:3-8, how would you define meekness?
Why is genuine meekness essential to hungering for righteousness?
What is one characteristic of meekness that you can commit to cultivating this week (Psalm 37:1-11)?
Breakout
Pray that the Lord will impress on you the imperative to be meek, and that as a congregation we will be committed to Biblical meekness.