The reading for today came from Matthew 5:1-5 with the key verse being verse 5 "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth"
We need to make up our own minds about what drives us. Is it a personal or a kingdom agenda?
Matthew 6:33 say "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."
In Jesus' day, when a rabbi sat down to tell people something it meant he had something important to teach. Matthew 5:1 tells us "Now when he saw the the crowds he went up on a mountainside and sat down". If the beatitudes were important enough to Jesus that he sat down to teach them then they should also be important to us and we should pay attention to them.Blessed means far more than happiness, you are part of the kingdom of God. With every "blessed" there is a spiritual reward.
Meek means quiet, gentle and easily imposed on, which in modern society is generally seen as weakness, but it doesn't mean the same thing in the passage before us today. The Greek word used in the original text means power with control and is the same word they used to describe a horse controlled by a man. One meaning of this passage could be "Blessed is the one who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time".
William Barclay translated the passage to read "Blessed are they who have every instinct, every impulse and every passion under control".
This doesn't necessarily mean self control either but God control. We need to yield, surrender and submit to God's control and adopt 'true humility which banishes all pride'.
We need to accept our need to learn.
Proverbs 16:32 says "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city."
God has called us to follow Him, to be meek, to be under His control.
Richard.
PS Thanks to Major David Godkin for giving me his power point notes to help me fill in some that I missed during the sermon. RR
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