Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Our scripture eating this morning comes from
the Mat Gospel, according to Matthew,
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from the first chapter, our fifth
chapter, the first through twelve verses.
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It's the beattitudes. Matthew, Chapter
Five, verses one to twelve. This
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is the word of the Lord and, seeing the multitudes, he went up
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on a mountain and when he was
seated, his disciples came to him.
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Then he opened his mouth and taught
them, saying blessed are the poor in
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spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
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for they shall be comforted. Blessed
are the meek, for they shall
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inherit the earth. Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
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they shall be filled. Blessed are
the Merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
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Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God. Blessed
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are the Peacemakers, for they shall
be called Sons of God. Blessed are
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those who are persecuted for Righteousness Sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Blessed are you when they revile and
persecute you and say all manner of
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evil against you falsely. From my
sake, rejoice and be exceedingly glad,
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for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who
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are before you. Thus far this
reading of God's holy word, the grass
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withers and the flower fades, but
the word of our Lord endeures forever.
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Please be seated well. This week
we're continuing our little study of the beatitudes.
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We have eight beatitudes and I had
three weeks in a row to preach
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to y'all, so I thought I
would start on that. If you're looking
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for a continuation, I have no
idea when, after this week, that
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may be, but if and when
I'm ever asked to preach again, I'll
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probably pick up where the fourth beatitude. But today we're looking at the third
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beatitude. Now, the beatitudes are
Jesus's introduction to the sermon on the mount
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which, of course, is his
longest recorded sermon, his greatest sermon,
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and as we've been looking at these
beatitudes, we've said the last two weeks
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that Jesus purposefully opens up this greatest
sermon of his with some things that were
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designed to immediately grab the attention of
the people who were there to hear him
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and that's because the read way he
does that is with these eight phrases,
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these eight beatitudes, that each of
which is incredibly counterintuitive, each of them
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is very unexpected and I think as
result, they grab our attention. Now
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we've also noted that the word be
attitude simply means blessing, but we don't
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really know what that word means in
English either. So the word blessed,
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said in the Greek language, means
basically happy, or even supremely happy.
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And so Jesus begins this longest sermon
of his by telling US crazy things like
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supremely happy, are the spiritually destitute, happy? Are The sad? Happy?
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Are The meek? Even happy are
the persecuted. And by beginning this
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sermon this way, by saying stuff
which, on the face of it,
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sounds crazy, he's grabbing the attention
of his listeners because he wants them,
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he wants us to change the way
that we look at our lives, the
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way that we think about what life
should be, what is the good in
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life? And I've also noted that
Jesus is describing here a process, a
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process of growth in grace. Each
of these be attitudes builds upon the one
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that comes before it if they describe
a process of heart and thought change that
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goes through the hearts and the minds
of God's people as we grow in grace
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with him. And of course,
the foundational be attitude was to be poor
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in spirit, that is, to
recognize your spiritual poverty and become a spirit
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rtual beggar waiting at God's doorstep.
The second beattitude is to recognize that God
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allows suffering and sorrow to come into
our lives in order to make us happy.
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And he allows suffering and sorrow to
come in our lives because it drives
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us to let go of the things
that we hold on to in this life
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for happiness, so that we can
then receive the comfort in the joy that
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he has for us. And now, this week we see the next step
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in this process of becoming a citizen
of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that
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is to become meek, for then, Jesus says, we shall inherit the
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earth. And so I want us
to look at this be attitude this morning
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in two parts. First, I'd
like us to consider Jesus has promise that
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we shall inherit the earth, and
second, I'd like us to see what
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it means to be meek. So
first the land, second the meek.
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So rather than taking the first things
first, I thought it would make more
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sense to take second things first and
first thing second. And when Jesus begins
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this be attitude, he says,
blessed are the meek, for they shall
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inherit the earth. Now, even
though I think most people just read over
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that second part of the be attitude, it isn't a throwaway line. See,
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when Jesus is talking about inheriting the
Earth, he's referencing an exceptionally important
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biblical concept or theme. When Jesus
says this, he's picking up a theme
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that runs throughout the entirety of the
Bible, and the theme is the theme
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of the land or the Earth,
as the inheritance of God's people. And
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when we see this theme of the
land running through scripture, it it's intended
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to resonate with a deep yearning in
our hearts. And that's because each of
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us has a yearning. Each of
us has a very deep seated, just
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fundamental longing for place. Each of
us has a yearning for a place that
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will be our home, a place
of peace, a place of safety,
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a place of beauty, and the
reason that we have that longing is that
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God has written it into the depths
of our hearts. And he's done that
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because we were made to live in
the place that we long for. We
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were made, that is, to
live in Eden. We weren't made to
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live in this broken, miserable,
terrible world that we live in. We
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were made to live in the garden
of Eden. Ever since our first parents
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sinned against God and we're banished from
Evil Eden, we've been yearning with homesickness
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for that lost home, that lost
peace, that lost beauty, that lost
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safety. In fact, if you
stop and think about it, most of
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our deepest yearnings and desires and longings
reflect something about how we were made,
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don't they? I mean, we
were made from the start to need God.
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He made us to need his daily
provision, to need his sufficiency.
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God made us to be in a
relationship with him and to live in relationship
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with him in an unfallen world.
And so all of the deep longings and
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yearnings of our hearts, well,
you can think of them as as sockets,
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and their sockets that need to be
filled with God's provision and his presence.
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And we've all seen children playing with
the round the peg thing, where
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you've got the round hole and you
have to put around peg in it or
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you have a square hole and you
have to put a square peg in it.
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And we're all familiar with the saying
that you know someone is like a
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square peg in a round hole.
Well, we as people were made with
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hearts that, if you think about
it, are round holes, but we're
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surrounded by a world of square pegs. But all the while, God intended
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to have the holes in our hearts
filled with his love. We have round
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holes in our hearts. He has
round pegs. If you think about it,
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nothing else will satisfy. As we
said last week, we all mourn
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the loss of Eden. We mourn
the loss of our home and purpose and
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peace that living in God's unfallen world
would bring. But what we do?
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Instead of looking for God's round peg, for the round hole in our soul,
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we all try to fill it by
hammering in these square pegs of sin.
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But though we try so very hard
to fill these holes in our hearts
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with sin, at some point each
of us realizes that we cannot find Eden
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here or in our sinful desires.
But nevertheless, the Good News, the
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Gospel News is that all of our
most, I should say, maybe not
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all, but most of our sinful
desires are rooted, that is, most
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of our sinful desires have their basis
in a longing for the legitimate joys of
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Eden. If you think about it, you were made for the things that
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you long for, just not the
way you long for them. For example,
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take the sin of lust. Lust
is rooted in a deep longing for
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intimacy. We all need to be
loved and known and cared for it the
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most intimate of heart levels, and
that's because God made us to be loved
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and known intimately by himself. But
humanity and each of us has debase that
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wholesome yearning for enimacy into a sin
that will consume and destroy our hearts.
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Or take the sin of greed or
covetousness. We were made to be provided
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for and watched over and taken care
of, and that's because God made us
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to be cared for by his own
hand in Eden. But we have debased
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that yearning and provision, or for
provision, into a greediness and covetousness that
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bulldoze is anyone who gets in our
way. Or take the related sins of
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drunkenness or addiction, or abuse of
video games or obsession with screens, whatever
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it is that we may use to
check out and find relief. God desires,
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in fact commands, that we be
free of anxiety and fear. He
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wants us to be safe at home
with him. But when we seek to
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find freedom from worry or from the
often overwhelming stress of life in some distracting
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of addiction or obsession, we lose
ourselves and we waste our lives and vanity.
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But no matter how we chase the
dream, no matter how we worship
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these idols, we are all faced
with the futility of it all. It
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is futile. We are all faced
with the inescapable fact that none of these
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things will recover our lost home.
We long for life in Eden, free
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from the sin or from sin,
free from the curse, free from the
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pains of this life and the realization
of sins futility coupled with that yearning for
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home and for peace and for beauty, that is a gift from God.
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That feeling of emptiness is a gift
from God because it points you to something
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greater that he offers. That realization
points us, namely to Christ and to
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his covenant promises. And throughout the
Old Testament we see God making Covenant Promises
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From The beginning to address this yearning
we have, and perhaps the greatest of
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those is the promise of the land. We see in the lives of Abraham
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and of his descendants that God promises
to give his people a home, a
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place of peace and beauty. In
the book of Exodus, the Lord said
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this. I have surely seen the
oppression of my people who are in Egypt,
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and I have heard their crime because
of their task masters, for I
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know their sorrows. So I have
come down to deliver them out of the
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hands of the Egyptians and to bring
them up from that land to a good
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in a large land, to a
land flowing with milk and honey. He
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goes on. He says it's a
land of large and beautiful cities which you
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did not build, houses full of
all good things, which you did not
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fill, hue out wells which you
did not dig, and vineyards and Olive
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Tree which you did not plant.
So he sets this promise before them and
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then God wet his people's appetite for
that promise through hundreds of years of slavery
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in Egypt and all the while that
they labored in bondage to Faraoh, they
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yearned and longed for that land.
To put it in the context of the
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preceding be attitude, they mourned for
the comfort of God's promised provision. And
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in fact, to this day the
Jews still vainly hope for the promise of
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the land of Palestine. In fact, the number one daily newspaper in Israel
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is arets, which is Hebrew for
the land. And yet as great as
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the promise of the land was,
it was just a type or a shadow
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of the Greater Covenant Promise of a
Land for God's people. And what is
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that greater promise? The Greater Hope
of the Gospel is the removal of the
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curse, the end of the fall
and the restoration of the entire world as
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renewed Eden. And the Gospel hope
is that, because God loves each of
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us so very much, Jesus came
to remove the cause of the fall.
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Jesus has taken from his people every
last stain of sin from our hearts and
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he's already begun the work of restoring
heaven to Earth, starting with the renewal
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of his people and moving outward.
And we, as his people, know
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that he is in the business of
doing this, because we know that Christ
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is king. He is king now, and he sits at the right hand
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of Majesty on High and he rules
and reigns over all of creation. This
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is why Jesus, when he came
preaching, started out by saying repent,
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for the Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand. He doesn't say it awaits the
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pine and they are the pie in
the sky and the by and by.
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He doesn't say it's going to happen
after wise, says the Kingdom of Heaven
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is at hand, you can touch
it. In Christ, Eden is even
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now being restored to us, and
though this earth is still in rebellion against
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its rightful king, we know that
Jesus is king now and that someday,
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soon and very soon, he will
return and put it into our Petty Rebellion
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and Vindicate His Faithful People and Restore
Eden to Earth perfectly and forever. And
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Jesus, here in this be attitude, wants us to know what sort of
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people will inherit his renewed Earth,
as he says here in Matthew. The
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people who will inherit it. Are
the meek blessed, or the meek,
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he says, for they shall inherit
the earth. Now, when I pulled
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out my English the Saurus and I
looked up the word meek, it said
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that synonyms for Meek are gentle,
compliant, docile, unassertive, weak,
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need mild and obedient, and the
Greek word for meek can mean humble or
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gentle. One one commentator describes this
word here. He says it can be
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translated as mild or soft and that
it was sometimes used to refer to a
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soothing salve or to a general breeze. Now, I don't know about you
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all, but that doesn't sound very
inspiring. Doesn't to be docile and mild.
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It doesn't get me very interested in
being meek. I don't. I
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don't know about you all. Maybe
that really lights your fire. I can't
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wait to be weak, kneat and
doscile. But what if I told you
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that there are other uses of that
word in Greek, other applications, and
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one of the ones that's very interesting. are a couple of them. One
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is that it can be used to
refer to an army and then it can
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be used to refer to a stallion. Now, in Greek history it's recorded
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that the Persian emperor's xerxes calmed his
troops before a battle. Now, the
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word that is used there is our
word here, meek. Literally, the
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Greek history says that xerk sees the
Great Emperor Meek afide his troops before going
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forth to slaughter his enemies. So
a world conquering army can be referred to
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as meek, and it can also
be used to refer to the demeanor of
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a stallion that has been broken to
human use. It's a dangerous wild animal
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who hasn't had his strength from moved, but who has had his strength turned
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to his master's will. I I
brought this here because I want to read
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y'all just a little paragraph. Is
A book, and in this book this
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fellows describing what it means to be
meek, and he's talking here about horses.
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He says if you've spend any time
around horses, you know a stallion
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can be a major problem. They're
strong, very strong, and they've got
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a mind of their own. Stallions
typically don't like to be bridled and they
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can be downright aggressive, especially if
they're mares around. A stallion is hard
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to tame. If you want a
safer, quieter animal, there's an easy
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solution. CASTRATE him. A gelding
is much more compliant. You can lead
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him around by the nose. He'll
do what he's told without putting up a
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fuss. There's only one problem.
Geldings don't give life. They can't come
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through for you the way a stallion
can. A stallion is dangerous all right,
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but if you want the life he
are the offers, you have to
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have the danger too. They go
together. See, I think that we
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often get the idea that meek in
scripture means something along the lines of gelded.
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In fact, I think that's one
reason that a lot of men aren't
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interested in church in our cultures.
They think they have to pretty much be
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gelded to be good Christians. But
but the reality is that the word Meek
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does not refer to a gelding.
It refers to a person who is powerful,
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strong and dangerous even, but whose
strength is under the control of a
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master who is bent it to his
will. Now we often get the idea
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that those who inherit the earth are
not those who are meek. You know,
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we look around the world around us
and and we think that that those
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who are powerful, those who are
at successful in this world, will inherit
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the earth because their power is bent
to their own will and to the achievement
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of their own desires. We think
of the type A personalities, the people
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who see what they want and they
go for it, the aggressive, the
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the assertive, the hard charging personalities. But it's interesting, I think,
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that when scripture uses the word Meek
as applied to people, it's used in
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the same way that it's used of
the stallion. It's not used of the
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hard charging people who bulldos others.
The meat person is someone who is strong,
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but someone who is strong in enough
to bridle and channel his strength in
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order to be gentle of spirit,
submissive, quiet and tenderhearted. meetness is
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not weakness, it is rather power
and strength under the control of God,
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the Holy Spirit. Let me say
that again, because we need to be
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disabused of this notion. MEEKNESS is
not weakness, it is rather strength and
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power under the control of God,
the Holy Spirit. It is the strength
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to endure scorn and abuse with grace
and long suffering. It is the courage
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to face your fears knowing that the
Lords, your God, is with you.
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It is the ability to channel your
passions and to commit your anger,
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your rage, to the God who
says vengeance is mine, I will repay.
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It is the power to change the
world around you through the imitation of
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Christ. That's what meetness is,
and this is only possible because we know
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that through Christ we have the sure
promis that all of those yearnings of our
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hearts have their yes and Amen,
and Jesus has covenant promises. MEEKNESS is
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possible because in Christ we know that
we have our sufficiency, our provision,
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our peace and our home. In
Christ we have the sure promise of Eden,
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the confidence of his imminent return and
glory to give us his kingdom,
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and all of these covenant promises,
the ones I rattled off last week,
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it any covenant promise you may find
in scripture. These promises free us from
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seeking eat and our own terms.
They free us from seeking him through the
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bending of our strength to our own
will, and it frees us to be
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meek. And that meekness comes rather
easily to us as we become more and
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more convinced in our hearts that Jesus
is kingdom and his new home for us.
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Isn't some vague promise that we read
about in some fairy tale, but
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that the kingdom is already present and
powerful in the here and now. And
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Meek. In addition to all of
that, it can mean easygoing, not
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easily offended. Consider it. It
refers to someone who is poor in spirit.
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It's someone who no longer seeks his
own rights or his own due,
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but someone who is so sure of
Christ's sufficiency that he's able to let go
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of the worries of his heart and
his obsession with taking care of himself for
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herself. It liberates us to stop
thinking about what we think is best for
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our lives. meekness refers to a
person who seeks to be faithful to God
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in his own sphere, a person
who doesn't try to make other people fit
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as mold, but who seeks to
fit Christ's mold in his or her own
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life. It's a person who seeks
to share the hope of Christ with others
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and to obey God, and yet
to do so without pushing anyone around.
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I remember years ago I read an
interview with Michael Horton, whom I imagine
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many of you familiar with and stand. Whoever it was who was interviewing him
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said, said Dr Horton, what
advice would you give to a new calvinist?
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And he said, my advice would
be to lock yourself in a closet
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for six months. Well, why
is that? was because anyone who becomes
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overwhelmed, whether it's becoming a new
Christian or it's becoming convinced of the doctrines
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of grace or whatever it is,
we get so convinced, we get so
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excited about this new thing that we
want to impose it on everyone else around
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us. We may not mean to, but we do. But the MEEK
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person says, Lord, let me
just be a tool in your tool box
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to do your will. In my
little sphere, Jesus is the best example
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of what it means to be meek. Of course, in First Peter,
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Chapter two, Peter says this.
What credit is it if, when you
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were beaten for your faults, you
take it patiently, but when you do
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good and suffer, if you take
it patiently, this is commendable before God.
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For to this you were called because
Christ also suffered for us, leaving
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us an example that you should follow
his steps, who committed no sin,
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nor was deceit found in his mouth, who, when he was reviled,
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did not revile and turn when he
suffered, he did not threaten, but
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committed himself to him who judges righteously. See, Jesus was meek. He
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endured great suffering for us, and
yet he opened not his mouth. He
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was led as a lamb to the
slaughter, as a sheep before it shares,
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is silent. So he opened not
his mouth. And yet at the
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same time, Jesus is incredibly powerful, but his strength was under control.
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He refused the bait. When the
Pharisees tried to make him angry, didn't
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he? But though he did blast
them on occasion, it was always with
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love and gentleness. And and even
in Matthew Chapter Twenty three, when Jesus
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blasted the Pharisees the most aggressively,
Jesus finished that scathing denunciation of their selfrighteousness
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with tears over their heartheartedness. And, as Peter says in First Peter Fifteen,
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sanctify the Lord in your hearts and
always be ready to give a defense
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to everyone who asks you for a
reason for the hope that is in you.
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With meekness and fear, as we
saw in our reading of the law,
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we're to give that reason in the
midst of suffering, in the midst
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of living in this broken, messed
up world. As we suffer, we
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give reason for the hope that is
in us. With meekness, with power
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under control, for instance, meekness
is when I see this world going to
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hell in a handbasket, but I
don't worry, I don't become angry or
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frustrated. Instead, with my strength
under the control of the Holy Spirit,
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I trust that Christ is on his
throne. I seek to be faithful in
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my little sphere, doing my part
to help the world, and I gently
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seek to point others to Christ,
for he alone can address the world's need
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for Eden. Or again, meetness
is when I look at you and you're
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sinning or you're doing something that makes
you look like an idiot. We all
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know people who do this. In
fact, you just have to look up
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here, but you look at someone
like that. But meekness is when I
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don't act like I'm tempted to do. meetness is when I refrain from jumping
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down your throat over your sin and
instead I entrust you to your father in
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heaven, whose son is the king
of kings and the Lord of Lords.
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I entrust you to your father in
heaven, and I seek to love you
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as Christ does, with patience and
long suffering and continual intercession for you with
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my God. And finally, Jesus
says that as we grow in our trust
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of his covenant promises, as we
avail ourselves of the means of grace,
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as we steep ourselves as strong tea, as it were, in his word
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where we find those promises, Jesus
promises that he will give us that special
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grace to see our neediness. He
will break us of our spiritual pride and
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make us spiritual beggars. He will
cause us to mourn the loss of Eden
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and to mourn this mess that we've
made of this world, and he will
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cause us more and more to believe
and to understand his covenant promise that in
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his Kingdom we finally have the answer
to all of our hearts, desires and
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yearnings. And as we know and
believe those covenant promises, we will be
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transformed more and more into the meek
and mighty men and women that will,
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in the imitation of our lord and
Savior, be used by our father to
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change this world and to transform it
for Christ, and that that is good
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news. Amen,
