Matthew chapter 5. Let's read
together the first 12 verses. And seeing the multitudes, Jesus
went up into a mountain. And when he was set, 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 they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are
they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall
revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven. For so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. It's easy to read the Bible,
it's hard to understand it, I find. But this message I've entitled,
The Master and the Blessed, Part Two. That was the same title
as last week's message, The Master and the Blessed. Now, the Beatitudes,
that's what these are called. It's a word, it's actually in
the dictionary. The Beatitudes in the dictionary,
I believe, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a state
of ultimate bliss. or something like that, ultimate
bliss, the blessedness of the B-attitudes. And I think that's
a reasonably good explanation of the B-attitudes. I misspelled
it. I spelled it with two T's, B-E-A-T-T,
but it's B-A-T, B-E-A-T, with just one T at the beginning.
I mention that because it looks like it's an attitude you are
to be, but they drop one of the T's. I'm not sure why. The point
is that these are attitudes that we don't produce. These are attitudes
that we don't produce, but God has to produce them in us. And
I think that if we understand the context of Matthew, if we
see the thrust of most, or much of what we see in the book of
Matthew, and all the Gospels for that matter, and the whole
time of Jesus' preaching and ministry on the earth and the
culminating in his suffering and death at the hands of those
who hated him because he spoke against their own righteousness
and against their sin, their superficial understanding and
keeping of the law, If we understand that, then we can understand
and appreciate these words as they enter in from the very beginning
of his sermon. The title of his sermon is right
almost at the beginning, blessed, blessed. Now, Todd Nybert pointed
out that the very, does anyone know what the last word in the
Old Testament is? I didn't, so I had to look it
up. The very last word in the Old Testament is curse. The very first word in Jesus'
sermon is blessed. That's significant, I think. Because the old covenant, the
covenant of works, the covenant that depends upon us, conditions
that we must meet in order to be blessed by God, always ends
with a curse upon us. But the covenant of grace, the
covenant that depends upon the conditions that Christ would
meet for his people, always begins with a blessing. And so when
we see these things, the first thing we see is that the blessing
comes with the authority of the king. The authority of the one
who has heaven's mission in his heart and in his mouth is the
word of God. He is the word of God and he
comes speaking from heaven and he says, blessed, blessed. But
then notice, too, the first thing that he points out here is that
those who are blessed are not those who the Pharisees thought
were blessed. The Pharisees would think, naturally,
the blessed are those who have kept themselves and have done
all that the law has said, or at least know the law and can
talk about it authoritatively and are able to compare themselves
to others and see how they have achieved certain things others
were unable to achieve to the fault of those who couldn't do
it and to their own glory. They were self-righteous. And
they would never have started a sermon like this, but Jesus
starts his sermon like this, blessed are you And basically
it's this, who have nothing in spirit, poor in spirit, bankrupt
in spirit. Now all men have nothing before
God. Romans 3.12 says that we are
together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good.
No one, not one, has any profit before God. Isaiah says we're
less than nothing, and Isaiah 40 says that all flesh is as
grass, and the glory of man is as the flower of grass. It fades
away. Psalm 39 5 says man and his best
estate is altogether vanity. So every man in himself has nothing. But not every man is poor in
spirit, because most men are not poor in spirit. Naturally,
no man is poor in spirit. And so these attitudes that Christ
starts His sermon with here, the being poor in spirit, the
mourning, the meek, the hungering and thirsting for righteousness,
these describe the attitudes that grace works in our heart
in order for us to be able to receive the gospel. In other
words, to believe on Christ as everything in our salvation.
If we understand these attitudes as something we need to achieve,
something we need to produce in ourselves in order to get
God to bless us, then we don't understand God at all, we don't
understand His justice at all, and we don't understand His grace,
and we don't understand ourselves. There's much that we don't understand.
There's a couple of verses that I found as I was looking through
this. Let's see if I can put my finger on them. He says, Boy, I revised this and revised
it. I might have dropped them from
this printout. So forgive me for that, but Let me see just
take a minute here I will see if I can put my finger because
I think this was uh, here they are poverty of spirit is something
that Christ says those who have are blessed. But poverty of spirit
is never the reason for their being blessed. I want you to
understand that. I have to say that because we naturally think
that. If I could just make myself poor in spirit, or if I was just
somehow born with it, or if I just acquired it somehow. Maybe I
got bonked on the head, or had a really tragic accident and
it made me humble. That's not going to be the reason
why God saves us. God's grace, God's mercy is never
given because He sees merit in us, nor is it given because He
sees our misery. God's grace is always given sovereignly
because He is good. Now in Exodus 23, it says this,
It's just a couple of verses here. I'll read these to you
and understand this. Neither shalt thou countenance a poor
man in his cause. And what it means is that just
because someone's poor, you can't change the law. The law is the
law. Don't treat a poor man in the
eyes of the law differently than a rich man. This verse also says
a similar thing. He says, In Leviticus 19.15,
you shall do no unrighteousness in judgment. Thou shalt not respect
the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, but
in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor. And then in Exodus
30.15 it says, the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall
not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering to
the Lord to make atonement for your souls. So you see, in the
eyes of the law, all men stand before God objectively. God is not a respecter of persons. God doesn't judge men based on
their station in life, based upon their inner attitudes. God's
law is objective and God judges righteously. And He doesn't judge
the poor differently than the rich in that sense. And so one
of the verses I read to you in Exodus 30-15 is teaching us that
redemption requires the same price for the poor and the rich. And we know what that price is.
It's the blood of Christ. So I only say that at the outset
in order to keep us from thinking that these attitudes are something
we need to acquire so that we can walk lowly enough that God
will bless us. That can't happen. These attitudes
are the characteristics the disposition given by God's grace to every
believer. And God gives us these attitudes
by His grace in order that we might see that our only hope
is in Jesus Christ and in Him alone. We come to God by Jesus
Christ. If He didn't die for us, our
sins are on us still. If He didn't fulfill all righteousness
for us, we can't provide any obedience to God. One who is
poor in spirit sees that he is nothing. He has nothing and he
can do nothing to bring something to God. God will accept. That's
what it means to be poor in spirit. It means to be broken. It means
to be contrite. It means to be brought low. And I want to read this to you
in 1 Samuel. I didn't read this last week,
though I meant to. 1 Samuel chapter 2. Look at these
verses starting at verse 6. 1 Samuel chapter 2. You know
the story of Hannah wanting a child and finally the Lord gave her
one. Gave her Samuel who was asked of the Lord. But in her
prayer, she prays to the Lord and she rejoices in her prayer.
And in verse 6 it says this truth. 1 Samuel 2.6. The Lord kills and he makes alive. He brings down to the grave,
and He brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes
rich. He brings low, and He lifts up. He raises up the poor out of
the dust, and He lifts up the beggar from the dunghill to set
him among princes and to make them inherit the throne of glory.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He has set
the world upon them. So, in these verses, you see,
God is the one who brings low. That's the work of God. James,
chapter 1, says the same thing. I'll read that to you. James,
chapter 1, he says, "...let the brother of low," in verse 9,
"...let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted,
but the rich in that he is made low." You see that? So God, in
His grace, brings us low. And the reason He brings us low
is so that we will not glory in anything but in Christ. We will not trust anyone except
Christ. We will not come to God with
anything except what He's done for us in Christ. We have no
basis, no grounds, Nothing that we in ourselves can look to and
say, God, I have a claim on God. There's a reason why God needs
to show mercy to me because, and the end of that, the finishing
of that sentence can never have the word me or I in it. God is
gracious to whom he will be gracious and he has mercy on whom he will.
And God is sovereign, but when He is gracious and merciful to
us, He brings us low. And He brings us low, as I said,
so that we will look to Christ only. And that gives me, personally,
the greatest comfort. Because I know, and every believer,
I'm speaking to this, I use my own self, but I know this is
the experience of every believer. And I'm not saying this in order
to say, well, here's the way I am, and you guys need to get
there. But I think you can share this experience if God has given
you the grace to have this poverty of spirit. I have nothing. I
really don't have anything before God. And I am nothing, and I
can do nothing that God can accept. His justice says, don't treat
the poor differently than the rich. Don't… everyone, whether
rich or poor, has to have the same atonement offering, the
same redemption offering. It's the same thing. God has
to do the work of salvation. And I come to Him looking to
Christ with this prayer in my lips, receive me for Christ's
sake. I love what it says in Philemon
chapter one. There's only one chapter in Philemon.
Paul prays to Philemon. He prays, he writes a letter
to him, but he pleads with him. He says, receive Onesimus, receive
him as myself. That is my own bowels. And he
says later on, he says, if he owes you anything, then put that
on my account. Receive him as me. Receive him
as myself. That's the way we come to God.
Lord, receive me for Christ's sake. And that's our only plea. We never get beyond that. So
the other thing you see about these attitudes is we never leave
these attitudes. When God gives them to us, they're
a part of our nature. In fact, it's part of the new
nature. The only way you know you're a sinner is if you're
saved. The only way you know that you have an old man is if
you have a new man. The only way you believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ only is if God has given you faith and repentance.
But when we feel in our souls the anxiety of having nothing,
and then receive the comfort from God's Word that you never
will have anything, all you have is in Christ, then even though
we're made empty, We're lifted up, aren't we? We're lifted up
because God has brought us low, but He never leaves us like an
empty bag. He always puts in us this faith
towards the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ. So I want to look at this case
in Luke 18. It's familiar, but we need to
look at this because this contrasts for us two men, one rich, one
poor. Luke 18, verse 9. And he spake this parable to
certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and
despised others. Two men went up into the temple
to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee
stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not
as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as
this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give
tithes of all that I possess." That describes a rich man. You see, that's the riches of
spirit that this man had. He was rich in himself, he thought that
he could, that he actually had done things or avoided things. Notice he names the negative. I'm not an extortionist. I'm
not this. I'm not that. I'm not the other thing. And
I'm certainly not like that man, that publican, the IRS man. I'm not like him at all. I would
never take a job like that. I'm above that. But pride causes
a man to imagine himself to be something when he is nothing. That's what pride does. Pride
imagines us that we're something when we're nothing. And I think
this is like it says in Galatians 6.3, if a man thinks himself
to be something when he's nothing, he deceives himself. As I call
this imagined riches or fools gold. I remember seeing all those
little sparkly things on the sand by the river and thinking,
man, I'm rich. Look at all this gold. It's fool's
gold. That's what our own obedience,
trusting our own obedience to make us accepted to God is. It's
called fool's gold. It's pride, self-righteous, meaning
that we have produced it. It says this in Proverbs 26,
12. Proverbs 26, 12 says, "'Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?'
there is more hope of a fool than of him. So the Pharisees'
pretended righteousness caused him to distinguish himself before
God and others and in his own mind. And Proverbs 18, 11 says,
the rich man's wealth is his strong city and as a high wall
in his own conceit. His wealth, his riches. It's
comparing in Proverbs. Remember Proverbs is these sayings
that have a deeper meaning. The rich man is wealthy because
he thinks in himself he has something to God. God has helped me do
these good things, and now I can come to Him and say, thank you,
Lord, I'm not like all these, I've avoided all these sins like
my neighbor has not, and I've done all these things like my
other neighbor wasn't able to do. I accepted Jesus, I did this,
I dedicated my life, I've done all these things, and now I come
to you as this good Christian. But that's not the way God receives
us. If he receives us ever, he will
always receive us for one reason only, for Christ's sake. And
a poor man knows that. But the rich man's wealth is
his strong city, and his high wall is his own conceit. So in his own mind, the Pharisee
thought God favored him for what he was and what he did. He thought
he owed himself for the merit that he imagined himself to have.
With this attitude, he could only despise others. Within himself,
he said, why aren't others as good as me? I did it, why didn't
you? That's the attitude. I see this
person and they seem to be weak and helpless and unable to be
as good as I am. Then the problem must somehow
lie with them. So the Pharisee, he didn't understand
himself at all. To the Pharisee, men make all
the difference when it comes to spiritual value before God.
He had a lot, at least he thought, and all that he had was to his
own credit. But notice the publican. Read
on, he says, and the publican, standing afar off, would not
lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast,
saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. The publican thought
he had nothing. He knew it. The fact of the matter
is they both had nothing. Neither one of them had anything
before God. But the publican knew that he had nothing. Others
told it to him. The Pharisee told it to him.
But God taught this man in his heart. There are those who, like
the publican, have these jobs that make them the object of
scorn. And they might feel persecuted
because of that. They might feel humbled. They
might be self-effacing and humble before men. But God is not talking
about poverty in spirit before men, or in the eyes, what we
think others perceive us as. There's a lot of people I've
worked with who didn't know God who were the humblest of people.
You couldn't hardly talk to them and look them in the eye. They
would look away and they would look this way and that way because
they thought themselves really to be incapable of coming up
to your level of whatever, intellect or skills or something. And they
were very humble. But they didn't know Christ.
The publican was humbled before God. The publican thought he
had nothing, and that was a true assessment. He was to blame. The truth is, they both were
to blame, and both were sinners. But to one, God showed mercy.
God made one of these two men poor in spirit that he might
receive the gift of righteousness, which is by faith in Christ alone.
The publican knew that he had no claims on God. God was not
obligated to him. God doesn't have to save me. We think, you know, some people
get upset when we say that Christ died for his own. He didn't die
for everyone. He saved his own. That's all
my trust. That's what a poor person says.
If you think that you're saved because you made a difference,
if Christ died for everybody, if God loves everybody, and somehow
you, you amongst all the others, and the Spirit of God draws everybody,
but you're saved and they're not, the only one to give credit
for the difference would be you. But the poor man says, I need
everything from God. I need God to choose me. I need
Christ to die for me. I need the Spirit of God to irresistibly
draw and call me and give me life and faith in Christ so that
all I see is Him. I need that. And we come to God
for that. We say, I know I'm proud. I know that I'm self-conceited.
I know that I have these same tendencies as the Pharisee. I
know I'm a hypocrite. I haven't done what I ought to
do, but I profess myself to be better than I am before men.
I'm all these things. You put it on the list, and I'll
have to check it off. It's me. It's me, and it's my
fault. The publican didn't avoid the guilt of his own sins. He
knew what he was before God. But notice also that the publican
didn't stop there, like we're prone to do. He said this, he
says, God be merciful to me a sinner. And he really says, God be propitious
to me a sinner. You see, like David in Psalm
51, turn to Psalm 51. Verse 1, the very first verse
of Psalm 51. We know, as soon as we say Psalm
51, don't you know what that's about? It's about David's confession
of his sin with Bathsheba. His murder of Bathsheba's husband
and his friend Uriah, his faithful servant, Uriah the Hittite. He
killed him. And he took his wife and committed
adultery with her, and he lived that way for a while. And it
wasn't until God sent his prophet to him that he actually confessed
his sin. That's what kind of a sinner
David was. And in verse 1, he says this.
And think about, if you have ever felt the guilt of your sin,
and knowing that you have sinned against light, not just once,
but many times. And you have no basis, no reason
to come to God in yourself. And God gives you the grace of
this poverty of spirit, then this is the way you come. Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according
unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out
my transgression. You see, like the publican, He
asked God to be merciful to him, not for what could be found in
himself, but for what was found in God.
There was nothing in him but wretchedness. When David was
guilty before God, and God's word came to him, he had nothing
to plead. He knew he was guilty. But he
goes to God anyway, and he pleads on the basis of his loving kindness,
God be merciful to me according to your loving kindness. You
see, God's mercy is only his saving mercy. Men will say, well,
I'm trusting that God is going to be merciful to me. What does
that mean? Like a king? Well, I'll just
let this guy go. No, God doesn't just let things
go. He will in no wise clear the guilty. Mercy, saving mercy,
is only found in Jesus Christ. And that poverty of spirit that
God teaches us always brings us to that. And if it doesn't
bring us to that, God hasn't taught us, He hasn't made us
poor. And so the publican and David
both pray the same way. Not for what can be found in
me, but for what is in Christ. He asked God to take away his
sin, to do for him what was impossible for men, to justify his guilty
soul. and he asked God to show him
mercy according to his justice. according to His righteousness,
not for anything in Himself, but entirely for what God found
in Himself, what He provided in Christ. That's propitiation,
and that's the mercy He cried for. And so this is what we see
in Matthew 5 in verse 3, that God teaches us these things.
Christ teaches us this, the very first thing He says is, the poor,
those who have nothing, And really it means in themselves. Those
in themselves who know themselves to be bankrupt before God. No
value, no worth, no potential. Nothing to pay their sin debt
and no goodness to bring for righteousness. Those people who
are given that and are given eyes to see that everything is
in Christ. They are happy people. They're
blessed people. Like Paul says in 2 Corinthians
6. Let me see if I can put my finger on that. This is the same
kind of thing. It's like, how can you say one
thing and then turn around and seem to say the other thing?
Paul does that a lot. Let me see if I can say this.
2 Corinthians chapter 6. It's getting cold in here, isn't
it? You guys cold? Brad's loving
it. Chapter 6. He says in verse... Verse 10, as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing,
yet possessing all things. You see, this is the way it is.
Poor in spirit doesn't mean empty and void and ready to jump off
the deep end. It means that I've come to God
like David, like the publican, looking to Christ, bringing my
worthless self in dust and in ashes and saying, Lord, save
me for Christ's sake. I know there's mercy in him because
you said so. You see, the next one, blessed
are they that mourn. To mourn, to mourn, it means
a lot of things. And let me get to my notes so
I don't get off track here. To mourn. to mourn. Why do we mourn? Well, I think about my own mourning. Have you ever mourned over a
lost loved one? What do you do? You look at them and you think,
there's just nothing I can do. They're gone, and no one can
help because they're dead. And you mourn that loss, don't
you? Especially, especially, if they're
Christian, we don't sorrow as the world, as others do, but
if they're lost, you had no reason to suspect that they believed
on Christ. That mourning is like David's
mourning over Absalom. Oh, Absalom, my son, my son,
would to God I had died instead of thee. Oh, Absalom, my son,
my son. That's mourning, isn't it? And
when we mourn, in this biblical way that Christ is speaking of
here. We're mourning over our condition in our sin because
we can't do anything about it. We're absolutely helpless and
yet we see this tremendous need to not be what we are and so
we cry out like Paul, oh wretched man that I am. And so we mourn because we're
a sinner, and we're not just sinners in practice, but we're
sinners by nature, and we can't do anything about it, and it
gives us great grief. The other reason we mourn is
that our sin, like David, was against God, who's so good. God has been so good to me. He's
given me so much light. He's given me promises. He's
shown me favor. He's told me what Jesus has done.
He's shown me His humiliation, His sorrow, and all the things,
and yet I'm such a sinner. My heart is so cold. My faith,
I don't even hardly believe Christ. My prayers are so empty. It seems
like nothing before God. I mourn because of that. I'm
so bad that I mourn. I long to be free from the dominion
of sin, and I mourn over that. I don't want sin. to have dominion
over me. And I say, Lord, fulfill your
word, as you said in Romans 6, 14. Grace, because I'm under
grace, sin shall not have dominion over me. Fulfill your word. And
so we mourn in that way, don't we? In our experience, we feel
the weight of who we are, we mourn over. But there's other
reasons to mourn too. I mourn because I don't know
Christ as I want to know him. I don't know him like I do. Sometimes
I think how little I know of him. And I say, Lord, show me
yourself like Moses. I mean, yeah, Moses. Lord, show
me your glory. Or like Paul, not that I've attained
or have already attained, but I press forward, I press on,
that I might be found in Him and not having my own righteousness
and might receive the prize of seeing Christ face to face. I
mourn over that. I want to see my Savior. I want
to see Him. I want to know that He's pleased. I want to hear His words that
say, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, and know that
that claim is because He did it for me. I want to know that. That causes me to mourn, but
at the same time, I mourn also over my loved ones. I love the people God has given
me in my life, and I mourn that they don't love the Master, that
they don't know Christ, and it causes me to mourn. I mourn over
my ignorance, my disobedience. I mourn over the success of the
gospel. Do you ever mourn that it seems like you pour your life
into something and the fruit doesn't seem to be there at times
and you mourn over that? But our mourning is always met,
these blessings that God gives to us are always met with comforts.
That's what He says here. Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted. What gives me comfort in my sin?
What gives me comfort even though I see my sin nature and I think
that I can't escape that nature? What comforts me there? That
Christ has paid for all my sins, that He's finished my salvation,
and that by His grace, According to His power, having overcome
my sin in the world and Satan, that He's going to deliver me
from my sin. He's going to present me faultless before His throne.
That gives me comfort. It gives me comfort that... You
know what comforts me? When God takes His word, and
He shows me that Christ only is my salvation. And it's really
true! It's really true! It's God said
this, and He said it to sinners. He really did say, who is He
that condemns us? It's Christ that died. He really
says that. He really says, come unto me
all ye who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.
He really did finish the work of salvation. He really did sit
down. He really did put away his people.
He really did establish everlasting righteousness and justify his
people. He really did. And when I hear these, when I
read them, when I read Philemon or whatever it is, and I see
these things, that salvation doesn't depend upon me, it depends
upon Christ. It gives me the greatest comfort.
And I lay down and I rest in that. And yet I mourn. I mourn. So these attitudes, we continue
to have these attitudes as we go through that in our lives.
And God gives us these things to receive grace that we might
look to Christ only. If I could get one thing through
with all these things that I see is that these are blessings from
God. so that we will embrace Christ
alone, and we will abandon all hope in ourselves, and trust
Him only, and rejoice in Him, rejoice in Him. We are the true
circumcision. We have no confidence in the
flesh. We worship God in Christ Jesus, and we rejoice in the
Spirit. That's what we do. So he says
these things. Now, the next verse, in verse five, he says, blessed
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The meek.
Now, the meek is something that we don't use that word a lot,
but being meek is something that we should understand here because
it says here that they're blessed and we know that these are describing
the nature, the character of all those that God saves, those
who believe Christ. What is it to be meek? Well,
we just read Numbers chapter 16 about this ordeal with Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram who opposed Moses and Aaron. And Moses, it
says in Numbers chapter 12, was the meekest man on earth. The
meekest man on earth. So if we know something about
meekness, we have to understand, how was Moses meek? If we can
understand that, that will help us to understand meekness. And
there were several things I noticed about Moses in his life. One of the things about Moses
that you see is he was not easily offended. Remember when he killed
the Egyptian because he thought God was going to use him to deliver
Israel? And then the next day this guy says, you know, what
are you doing? You're trying to, you know, he
tried to break them, separate them who were fighting against
each other, the two Israelites. What are you doing? Who made
you a ruler over us? And a deliverer. So he just leaves. He leaves
Egypt. Goes away. Forty years later,
comes back. That's a long time. Forty years. And when he comes
back, he doesn't think he can do the job. Some of that was
humility, and some of it was just plain unbelief. But he was
a very... He had no confidence in himself.
But God gave him confidence in himself. And God sent Moses. And when Moses came to the people,
one thing Moses was convinced of is that God sent him. He was convinced of that. Absolutely.
I'm not here on my own mission. I'm here on God's sending. I'm here with His Word. What
I'm telling you is God's Word. So he goes into Pharaoh, the
king of Egypt. All these millions of people
are under his rule and dominion, his iron fist. And he says, let
my people go. That's what God says to you.
Let my people go. Moses wasn't the kind of man who would sit
down, back up, and shut up. He was a man's man. You tell
him, you need to be quiet. You need to stop saying what
you're saying. You need to sit down and you need to turn around
and leave here. Moses would not do that. I'm
sent by God. I have God's Word. And whatever
He said for me to say, is what I'm saying. When you don't hear
me, you're not hearing him. So he had this attitude that
God sent him. That's the first thing you see.
And Moses was sent by God, and he had been, I like this term
that someone else used, is that he was mastered by God. He knew that God was his master. And he liked it. He liked having
the Lord the Lord's will done in everything. Whatever happened
with Moses, he understood it was God's will, and he received
it from God, and he trusted that God would do right in all that
he did. He was a meek man. He was a man
who did not seek to please men, but God. That's what a meek man
does. He does not seek to please men,
but he seeks to please God. A meek man seeks the salvation
of others in order to establish God's people with his son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was a meek man like that.
He says, I want to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ
at a great personal cost to himself. He did that. And a meek man,
when he sees God's people going astray, what does a meek man
do? He doesn't get out his whip to beat the people, although
he does feel frustration by their foolishness. What he does is
he falls on his face and he pleads with the people. And he also
falls on his face and he pleads with God for the people. So he's like a mediator. A meek
man like Moses was a mediator. How many times did Moses mediate
between God and his people? God said, I'm going to destroy
them. And Moses said, No, no, you can't do that. Because, well,
I didn't say it that way, but he says, no, Lord, because if
you destroy them, then the enemies will say you couldn't save them.
So he reasoned with God on the basis of God's nature and God's
purpose and God's will in order that he might do what he said
to save his people. That's what a meek man does.
He knows God. He knows who he is and what his
purpose and his work is. And he pleads with God on that
basis for those sinners that He's been given charge over,
and He's a servant to them in order to glorify God, in order
to fulfill God's Word. That's what a meek man does.
It says in Titus, I think it's Titus, about 1-7, about an elder
in the church, it's like this too, he had to have this qualification.
He says, He says, a bishop must be blameless as a steward of
God. A steward of God is someone who is in charge of God's things
and has to handle them and take care of them as if they were
gods and very carefully watch over them. That's what a steward
is. Not self-willed. not soon angry, not given to
wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of
hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate,
holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he
may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince
the gainsayers." That's what Moses did. When Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram withstood him, it was just him and Aaron. 250 of the most noble princes in
Israel joined up with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and they
opposed Moses. And these men came and they said, we're just
as holy as you are. Aaron's a priest. We can be a priest too. Even
though God had blessed them with taking care of the tabernacle
and the ministry, they wanted more. And Moses said, God called
me. God chose Aaron. What I'm telling
you is not my words, it's His. You oppose Him, not me. And so
He withstood them in the name of God. And then, when the people
came to oppose him, and he knew that God's wrath was against
them, he falls on his face, and he pleads with God to spare them. That's a meek man. Look at 2
Timothy, chapter 2. This verse rings in my ear all
the time. 2 Timothy, chapter 2. The minister of God, like Moses,
is one who pleads with God, and pleads with the people, because
he has God's glory as his aim, and God's word in his heart,
and God's people are his burden, and he carries them, and he labors
for them as a servant to God. And he says this in 2 Timothy
2, verse 25. Verse 24 says, "...the servant
of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all, apt to
teach, patient in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves,
if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of
the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." You see,
Paul understood this. How many times did he plead with
men, the Jews, who opposed themselves and rejected the Lord Jesus Christ?
At the end of the book of Acts, he says, well, seeing you reject
the word of God, we're going to go to the Gentiles. You put
it far from you, so we're going to take this gospel to the Gentiles,
and that's what he did. So a meek man. A meek man is
mastered by God. A meek man seeks to please God,
not men. When Paul in the book of Galatians
wrote to the Galatians, he told them, I had to call Peter on
the carpet. And Barnabas also was led away
by what Peter did because he thought that something he did
before men to please them was necessary. in order to gain the
approval of men. This is all wrong, and he rebukes
him. And so Paul was meek, but he wasn't weak. He wasn't a man
who would stand down in the face of opposition. He stood up, and
he told them, this is what the Lord says, and he stood for that. So Moses was a very meek man.
He did not take things personally, but he had compassion on those
that opposed him, those who were out of the way. He knew the plague
of his own heart, And in conflict, he rested his case with God.
He reasoned, and he pleaded with the people to hear, to believe,
and to obey the Lord. And that's what he did. He did
these things in meekness. Now, what you see is that our
Lord Jesus Christ always fulfills these attitudes preeminently.
He's the master. He's teaching his disciples.
And he is the one who is the the premier fulfillment of these
things. So when it says, blessed are
the meek, the Lord Jesus Christ said, Come unto me, all you who
labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Didn't
the Lord Jesus come in His Father's name? Didn't He not come on His
own mission, but on His Father's mission for His people? And didn't
He plead with His Father for them? He made intercession for
the transgressors. And didn't He plead with His
people? He sends His ministers and He says, Be ye reconciled
to God. We beseech you, in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God. This is what he did. All that
he did, he did for his people and for the glory of his father. He was meek. But he was not weak. He was not weak because he knew
his mission. He knew his father and he had
a zeal. The zeal of the Lord of hosts.
And he wasn't going to back down. He wasn't going to back up. He
wasn't going to sit down until a job was done. He set his face
like a flint. And he went on to do the will
of God because he was mastered by God. and all of God's people. Now, we grow in these things,
don't we? We grow in poverty of spirit. We grow in our understanding
and sorrow for our own sin and for the situation that our loved
ones are in. We mourn over the fact of the
gospel, the success of the gospel. We mourn over these things. And
in our Christian experience, we grow in these things. We grow
in mourning and poverty of spirit and meekness and all these things.
They're constantly with us. But the Lord Jesus is the premier
example of these things, and he tells us what meekness is.
When we are faced with the Word of God as our only hope and our
only rule of life, it comforts us and it strengthens us. It
causes us to stand fast. And to lay hold on Christ with
a firm grip. We're fixated on Him. We lay
hold on Him and we don't let go. We don't turn back. We don't
leave Him. Because God has mastered us.
God has made us to submit to the righteousness of Christ alone.
Hasn't He? Has God mastered us that? Has
He mastered me that way? Has He mastered you that way?
Has He made us to know that you have nothing and Christ is all
to you? That's meekness. That's poverty
of spirit. That's mourning. All put together
in the new nature. Christ alone. That's the teaching
of these things. It's Christ only and always.
And we in ourselves are nothing. And God is everything. God's
will is supreme. And we want it to be done. Abigail
was meek. Remember Abigail? You know who
she was? Abigail was the wife of Nabal,
who was a foolish, churlish man, when David sent his men to gather
some food together for his men who had been protecting Nabal's
vineyards and his sheep and everything. And Nabal said, I don't know,
David. I'm not going to give him anything. And David said,
all right, you guys, put your sword on. We're going in. We're
taking him out. And Abigail hears about it. She puts together all
this food. She puts it on donkey. She goes
out there and she comes behind and she bows herself down. And
she pleads with David, don't do this, don't do this, because
I know if you take vengeance for yourself, and then when the
Lord has made you king, then you'll have this against you.
And you, and so she pleads with him and reasons with him. And
he says, okay, okay, I understand. Thank you for coming. And so
then later God kills Nabal and David takes Abigail for his wife.
And he sends his men to go get Abigail. And it says, And when
the servants of David were come to Abigail, they spake to her,
saying, David sent us to thee to take thee to him, to wife. And she arose, and listen to
her meekness, she bowed herself on her face to the earth, And
she said, behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet
of the servants of my Lord. That's meekness, isn't it? I
just want to be a servant to wash the feet of the servants
of my Lord. She thought herself to be nothing.
She knew David to be God's anointed. And she was happy just to wash
the feet of his servants. And he said, no, I want you to
be my wife. This is what the believer is. The Lord Jesus Christ
has espoused us to Himself. And when He gives us His Spirit,
we're so thankful, like Mephibosheth. We lay in the dust. What am I? A dead dog that you should look
upon me. He says, you're going to eat
bread at my table all the days of your life, Mephibosheth. And
he says to Abigail, come on, you're going to be my wife. She
says, I just want to wash the feet of your servants. I would
be content to do that. That's meekness, isn't it? God
help us to have these attitudes. Because, you know, when we have
these attitudes, you know how strife comes? Strife, that fighting
that comes? You know how that comes? It says
in Proverbs, "...only by pride cometh contention." Another proverb
says this, "...the rich answers roughly..." I think that's Proverbs
18, 13. "...the rich answers roughly..." But the poor uses entreaties. Remember that verse? Have you
heard that? Let me see if I've got that right.
Proverbs 18, 13. Another one comes to my mind,
but I'll tell you this one first. Proverbs 18, 13. No, that's not
it. Nope, that's not it either. Okay,
well, it's in there. Look it up, and while you're
reading the Bible, see if you can find it. The rich answers
roughly, but the poor uses entreaties. I thought I had Proverbs 18.23,
but that's a different one. Proverbs 18.23, the poor uses entreaties,
but the rich answers roughly. Only by pride comes contention.
So when we have these fightings, whether they're in our home,
or in our church, or wherever they are, know that it's only
by pride that these things... Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, they
rose up in their arrogance. Oh, we're as holy as you. We
can do this. Well, God hasn't chosen you to
do this. But we can. Well, who said you can? You don't
get to say what goes on. The meek man does what God says.
They weren't meek. But there's another Proverbs
that says something like, the full soul loatheth and honeycomb,
but to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. I like
that. Listen to this verse in Psalm
73, 25. This is a good one. This really
wraps it all up. We've only scratched the surface.
It says, "...whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on
earth that I desire beside Thee." Psalm 73, 25. Don't you love
that verse? Do you ever feel like, I don't
have any hope in myself, and there's no one that can help
me on earth? "...whom have I in heaven but Thee, you're my only
hope, Lord, You're my only salvation. You're all my salvation. And
I have no one on earth I desire beside Thee. My desire is to
see the Lord Jesus Christ. Sure, I love my wife. I love
my children. I love you all. But when you really get it down
and I get to heaven, I'm going to be looking for Jesus. I'm
going to be waiting to see His face because there's nothing
I want more than to see His face and to know that I'm accepted
because He loved me with an everlasting love and gave Himself for me.
Paul said it so well. The Son of God, the Son of God
who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's being blessed, isn't it?
The blessed, I like that verse in Psalm 64, 5, I think it is,
blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach
to thee. That's a blessed man, the one
that God has chosen. The blessed man is the one God
has chosen in Christ. To be chosen in Christ means
God gave you to Christ and said, having given you to Christ, I've
chosen you to be my son. He's going to save you all by
himself. That's blessed, isn't it? To be chosen in Christ, to
be adopted as God's Son, to be given all spiritual blessings,
that's a blessed man. All their sins are forgiven.
He says in Psalm 32, the blessed man is the one to whom the Lord
will not impute sin. The blessed man is the one God
justifies for Christ's sake. That's a blessed man. The blessed
man is the one God says who can condemn the one that he justifies. That's a blessed man. The blessed
man is the one that God says all things are working together
for his good. That's a blessed man. And the
blessed men and women are those who are poor in themselves, empty
in themselves, have nothing in themselves, and see that all
their hope is in Christ. There's no reason for them not
to trust Christ. Their sin isn't big enough for
them to not trust Christ. He's big enough to save the chief
of sinners. And he did save the chief of
sinners. Paul says, I'm he. So now we can line up and say,
Lord, save me too. Let's pray. Father, we pray that
you would show us that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ everything.
And coupled with that, show us that in ourselves we have nothing.
And keep us there, Lord, so that we would never rise up in arrogance
and despise others and think ourselves to be something that
we're not. And deceive ourselves in self-conceit. But help us,
Lord, to walk with all humility of mind like our Lord Jesus did.
who made himself of no reputation, made himself poor that he might
make many rich. Help us ourselves to be like
Abigail, to lay in the dust and say, let me just wash the feet
of my Lord's servants. And like Moses, to plead with
them, with sinners, to plead with God for sinners, to seek
your glory, to proclaim your word, to trust your promises,
to rest in your will, to do all things because we've been mastered
by God. Lord, we pray that you would
give us these graces of poverty of spirit, mourning, for your
people, mourning for your glory and mourning over our sin, but
knowing that in Christ we shall overcome, because he did everything
for you. Lord, we thank you for this grace.
Thank you for your people. Thank you for your word. We're
comforted by your word and only by your word. And we're comforted
by one another because you've given us this common grace so
we can say with confidence that Christ is my only hope. I have
no hope in myself, but having Him, I have all things. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.