The Meek

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This is the fourth message in our series, “The Beatitudes: Jesus’ Invitation To The Good Life.” JR shares with us how meekness is the key to the Kingdom of God, why we should desire meekness, and how to cultivate it. 

Sermon Text: Matthew 5:1-5. 

“...true meekness shows a strength and courage that is hard to muster of ourselves—it makes no earthly sense. Deep in our bones, most of us agree with Omar Little, the stick-up man in HBO’s The Wire: “The game is out there, and it’s either play or get played.” We live on edge, poised to strike back, tit for tat, to defend our rights no matter the cost. It’s an anxious, irritated, and miserable existence.” Derek Rishmawy, “Meekness is not Weakness.” 

Psalm 37:1–17 

Romans 12:21 

“Somehow we must be able to stand up to our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half dead, and we will still love you. . . . But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”Martin Luther King, Jr. Sermon at Xmas 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church

  • Keep your eyes on the eternal

1 Peter 2:23

  • Keep your eyes on Jesus 

Matthew 11:28–30 

“According to an internal report from Facebook, leaked to the Wall Street Journal, “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness . . . in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.” To keep you on Facebook, the platform keeps you engaged with highly emotional content—which usually means the most extreme, partisan, intoxicating trash possible. This explains why people get radicalized so easily on social media.” Patrick Miller, “I Lost my Mom to Facebook.”