Influencing the Earth

When we hear the word meek, we picture someone who is weak. But this is not how the Bible portrays a meek person. Numbers 12:3 says “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth”. The context in which the Lord made that statement was when Miriam and Aaron were speaking against and thinking themselves to have equal status with Moses. Moses did not confront them for this behavior, but God did. He called them into the tent for a private meeting and stood before them in a pillar of cloud. With a stern voice God said “hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord” (Number 12:6-8a ESV). God made it clear that Moses was in charge and was to be followed. God communicated with Moses not in the haze of a vision or the figment of a dream but he put his lips directly upon Moses’s lips. He breathed his very words into the mouth and mind and heart of Moses. God did so because Moses was the meekest man in all the earth. Therefore, he was in tune with God and could be trusted. That is a mural of strength.

Jesus surely considered the character of Moses when he said “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5 ESV). Someone who is meek is tame as opposed to acting wild. They are wise rather than foolish. Insightful, not disruptive. Steady not static. Useful instead of harmful. A meek person is strong yet they possess a gentle demeanor. We might describe the meek individual as being self-controlled. But in a spiritual sense it is far more than that. To be self-controlled assumes that we are in charge and accountable only to ourselves. Yet no matter how much self-control we have we are lessened by our flaws. We are subject to human frailties. Somewhere in life’s journey our self-control will meet its match and our souls will surrender in defeat. To be meek is to be God-controlled. A meek person is one who has been tamed by God. A meek person has submitted themselves to God and has allowed the Spirit of God to shape and mold their character. Moses had been subjected to the arrogance of Pharoah’s household for forty years. Then he spent forty years as a herdsman in the wilderness. In the barrenness of the desert with his nostrils filled with the stench of sheep he discovered the aroma of God’s grace. Submitting himself to God he became a meek man that God could use.

The meek person through his God-tamed strength will inherit the earth. That does mean that he owns the earth. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” Psalm 24:1 ESV). The meek person may not hold many deeds to property. They may not hold jurisdiction over defined territories. Their names may lack notoriety. But the meek inherit the earth because they are able to influence the earth for God and for good. Leadership is influence. A meek person is able to influence those in their realm and encourage them to move in a Godly trajectory.

The world is filled with statues. Buildings and roads bear the names of powerful people. History books tell the stories of conquests and empires. Some of these great leaders have been agents of good and some have been tyrants for evil. But eventually statues will be torn down. Buildings will decay and roads will crumble. The memorials we erected will just be aging pyramids full of bones. In time the historians usually will expose the complete story.

The meek will inherit the earth because what has preserved the earth for generation after generation is not the conquering tactics of ambitious men. Rather, it is the goodliness and godliness of those who have lived in submission to the principles of our righteous God. This is what brings blessings to our world and blessedness to our own souls.

 

Blessings found in Mourning

 

Mourning occurs because we have lost something. Our losses might be precipitated by mistreatment, misunderstanding, mistakes, mishaps, miscalculations, misplacement, misdeeds, and various other misconstrued events of life. If we lose something of limited value we don’t mourn very much. But if we lose something that is really important to us the grief may seem almost unbearable. The shock factor alone may open a furrow so deep that it engulfs part of our life burying it forever. We are going to lose things as we travel the rugged winding roads of life. Those losses will sometimes rip things from our souls that cannot be replaced. No matter how hard we try there will be pieces of ourselves that we cannot find. When that happens, we mourn.

In full knowledge of this certain predicament Jesus made this promise “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt.5:4). To be clear, this promise is to people of faith. The promise is to people who out of desperation will seek God. Our ears must not be shut to the voice of God. Our eyes must be open in order that we may see the hand of God at work. Our minds must be receptacles willing to receive new insights from God. Our hearts must be permeable so that we can be saturated with the love of God.

We cannot obsess about the unfairness of our mourning no matter how true that may be. Rather we must use our mourning as an opportunity to reflect and readjust and reprioritize for the future God is developing for us. The cause of our mourning occurred in our yesterdays. But the promise of comfort is experienced in our todays and tomorrows. “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5b).

When we mourn, we find comfort through new discoveries about ourselves and God. The Lord corrects aspects of our thinking that are wrong. He tweaks our understandings of truth and solidifies our grasp of his eternal values. We find comfort because the Lord is always doing something brand new in our lives. Jeremiah wrote “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

We find comfort in the midst of mourning as the Lord instills new ambitions within us. Mourning presents us with new opportunities that we should not squander. In our sorrows the Lord may give us visions for new avenues of ministry. In his grace he provides comfort to us and we are able to join his tribe of wounded healers.  

We find comfort because of new perspectives. We come to realize that we are not the only person who has suffered loss. In the process of mourning, we find comfort as we learn to focus less on our pain and more on helping others solve their pain. We become less attached to this world and we grasp for the hope found in the next world. In mourning we are comforted because the past grows dimmer and the horizon of heaven gets closer. The past is bitter but heaven becomes sweeter and sweeter as the days go by.

Benefits of Being Poor

 

Being poor is inconvenient. It limits our choices. It makes it harder to navigate our worlds. Having riches would add a lot of benefits to life. But Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:4). Since I have enough resources to get along pretty well in life, I find comfort that Jesus emphasized being “poor in spirit”. Even though I am not a pauper I can still be blessed and have a place in God’s kingdom. But Luke’s version of this teaching says “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20). Indicating that physical poverty precipitates the benefits of the kingdom.

If we are poor in terms of physical assets it might make us mean in spirit and drive us from God. Jesus is saying that being poor should humble us and cause us to recognize our need for God and drive us to trust God.  If we possess the riches of this world, we have to find ways to divorce ourselves of the power of riches and recognize our need for God. To be poor in spirit means that in spite of whatever riches we possess we humble ourselves ultimately trusting God for every sustenance in life.  When we cast our cares on God in this fashion, we access the power and benefits of heaven.

Wealth and talent and pride have the power to rob us of humility. They can rob us of eyes that recognize God. They can cause us to have faith in things that diminish and neglect to trust in the eternal powers of God.  

The pains of life are sufficient to make our spirits poor. But we need to embrace that impoverished spirit with enough desperation to put our trust in God. We may lose everything this world has to offer. Our hands may become empty. Our accounts may be dry. But if our fingers cling to Jesus the kingdom of heaven belongs to us.  

Serving the Crucified Christ

Filled with hate, ignorant of truth, lacking in faith, and void of righteousness the Jews had plotted to kill Jesus. Rome took ownership of their plot and made a statement of their authority in the act of crucifixion. In the course of less than twenty-four hours Jesus was arrested, accused, lied about, endured six mock trials, cursed, beaten, and in humiliation crucified naked before the viewing world. As the sun made its downward turn, he breathed his last and hung dead on the cross. As the dark of evening approached there emerged from the shadows a servant named Joseph who was from the town of Arimathea.

Some refer to Joseph as a secret disciple of Jesus. But his thoughts regarding Jesus were not that secret. The gospel writers tell us that he was a member of the council, “a good and righteous man” who was himself “searching for the kingdom of God”. If his attitude regarding Jesus was private it lost its privacy when in a council meeting, he refused to consent to the majority opinion to work toward the demise of Jesus. 

Joseph did not have the power to stop the violent death of Jesus. He lacked adequate information about the meaning of the event. But he had enough theological understanding of the significance of Jesus and enough admiration for Jesus to serve him by administering proper burial.

We think of servants being poor but Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man. One does not need to be rich to be of service to the Lord. But we are to use whatever means we have to serve the Lord and His cause. If we have great means we are called upon to use those means to advance the kingdom and minister unto people. “To whom much is given, much is expected”.

Joseph was a servant with courage. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was a weak ruler, so we might think that did not take much courage. Under Roman law the body of someone who had been executed was considered state property. Pilate could grant that body to anyone he so desired. Or he could refuse to relinquish the body to anyone. In such cases the bodies might be thrown into the nearby garbage dump and burned or at best buried as a pauper in the local potter’s field. Joseph took the risk of requesting the body from Pilate. But his real act of courage was that he, a member of the council, was identifying himself with Jesus. He risked being ostracized by his faith community. He risked trouble with the government. He risked losing business and position.

Joseph was a rich man but he was not afraid of difficult work. He engaged in the gruesome task of taking the tortured body of Jesus down from the cross. He purchased a new linen shroud and with the help of Nicodemus prepared the mangled body of Jesus for burial. Joseph had a heart willing to sacrifice. He took Jesus and laid him in his own tomb that had been freshly cut of the rock nearby. This was the tomb Joseph of had built for his own burial. It had never been used. But now it had been defiled with the body of one who had been executed as a criminal.

In reality Joseph’s tomb was occupied by the one who bore the richness of heaven, the richest of the rich. But Paul reminds us that for the sake of our salvation Jesus “became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (II Cor. 8:9). At the time of his burial Jesus had become the poorest of the poor, stripped of all his wealth by the weight of our sins. Yet by the sovereignty of God and because of Joseph’s servant heart he lay in a rich man’s tomb awaiting the day of resurrection when all the richness of heaven would be restored to him.

 

Seeing the Crowds

Jesus spoke a simple message of hope to people and provided practical help by healing their diseases and afflictions. So, the crowds gathered around him. The crowd in one town would follow him to the next town until soon the crowds were very large. The crowds that gathered were filled with sick, afflicted, and oppressed people.

The setting for the Sermon on the Mount is revealed in Matthew 5:1. “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him”.

Jesus always saw the crowds. He saw them not just as gathered masses of humanity but as sheep in need of care. Jesus went up on the mountain not in order to get away from the crowds but so he could observe them. From the vantage point of the mountain Jesus and his disciples could view the crowds for what they were. They were people in need of love, grace, mercy, and instruction. To the government, business, and religious structures of their society they were just tools, instruments to be used to enhance the desires of the power structures under which they lived. But to Jesus they were human souls created in the image of God. The crowds would have siphoned emotional energy from Jesus yet they strengthened him because in them he saw his purpose for being in the world. He had come to work for justice in the present world and provide the path for salvation that would ensure eternal life in the world to come. On the mountain, with his eyes on the crowds and with his disciples gathered around him, Jesus posturing himself as a teacher “sat down”. The disciples stood in the position of learners. Jesus began unfolding truths about the character they needed to possess and develop if they were going to emulate him and fulfill the purpose to which he was calling them.  

We do not know how attentive the disciples were or how well they understood. Our real concern should be how much attention we give to the teachings of Jesus and how well we follow the instructions. 

He Opened His Mouth

Matthew 5:2 tells us that Jesus “opened his mouth and taught them”. What followed were the profound teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

Many people open their mouths yet teach us nothing of value. Profound lessons do not just erupt from our voices. They must first be processed in a sound mind. They need to be filtered by a righteous heart.

Many people open their mouths and teach us falsely. They are either ignorant of truth or deniers of truth or maybe just plain liars. The motive of their heart is to de-rail truth by manipulating facts or deceiving the audience by withholding information. Corrupt minds and vile hearts will never compose and propagate truths that lead to wholesome societies and upright behaviors.

When Jesus opened his mouth, he taught with clarity. Without apology he taught divine truths that his mind had processed and formed into language that simple humanity could understand. He spoke not just words of truth but thoughts that were ripened and seasoned with wisdom. When Jesus spoke, he did so with a heart filled with love, compassion, fairness, and concern. The words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart were found acceptable in the sight of God.

The teachings that came from the mouth of Jesus are not easy for us to adopt and assimilate into life. In fact, it is pretty tough to follow the teachings Jesus unfolded in the Sermon on the Mount. Some of them may seem unpalatable to our depraved psyches. But the words of Jesus reveal the expectations he has for those who desire to follow after him. He leaves no doubts as to how we should structure our lives.

When Jesus opens his mouth, we need to take it as truth. We may find it necessary to meditate in prayer with him about the details. It may be prudent to engage in questions and discussions with our fellow believers to get a better understanding of how we can apply his teachings in practical ways. But the principles set forth by Jesus are clear. They are not up for negotiation or amendment. When Jesus opens his mouth, the proper response is to listen and to obey what we hear.