Matthew 5:5 - June 16, 2024

And as we get started this week, we're gonna look at our third beatitude in Matthew. We're in Matthew chapter five, verse five. But today, I wanna start by sharing a story with you. And this story is not my story.

In fact, I got this story secondhand. I got it from someone else. So maybe it's even apocryphal, I don't know. But I do trust the person who gave it to me. And some of you will probably recognize the story that I'm about to tell you.

And you might even know exactly who I'm talking about. So maybe this will be interesting to you. But once upon a time, there was a man. This man recognized the need for Jesus in a certain town, in a certain part of the country.

And being a man of God, he decided to take it upon himself to answer what I can only assume it was what he believed to be the call of God on his life. The call of God to bring Jesus to the people that he saw.

So what he did was he found a location and he began to build a church. And when I say he began to build a church, I don't mean he just went to where a church was and started preaching and started inviting people.

No, he physically started building the building itself. Now, I don't recall exactly whether he finished building it or not or started holding services or whatever. But that's not what's terribly important to the story.

What is important to the story is that this man was seen as something of an outsider to the community where he started building this church, where he wanted to bring the word of God. And a lot of times in small towns, you may know people don't always care for outsiders.

They don't always care for people who come in and try to establish themselves in their town. So the people burned the building down to the ground. Now, what I want you to do this morning is put yourself in this man's shoes.

You felt like you were called of God to come to a certain community to bring the word of God to them and you start building your church. And in response, these folks destroy it, essentially telling you that you're not welcome here.

Now, what would you do? Just think for a second about what your gut response would be to something like that. Like, I have a few ideas of how I would probably respond and I'm not particularly proud of any of them.

And I can imagine what quite a few of you are probably thinking as well. But this man, according to the story I was told, he did something completely unexpected. In response to this building being burned down, he didn't say a word, he didn't do anything, except for go out and get some more materials and start rebuilding the church.

Now, I want you to keep that story in the back of your mind. And again, I know that some of you at this point probably know exactly what it is that I'm talking about. And you probably know the story way better than I do.

But this story illustrates the principle that we're talking about today. And in fact, it does a really good job illustrating a lot of the principles that we've been talking about so far in the Beatitudes.

Because again, the Beatitudes, this part of the Sermon on the Mount, they're not trivia, or they're not suggestions to us. They're not just something that might be a good idea for us in the way that we live our lives.

No, what the Beatitudes are are behaviors that are outgrowths of a life that are truly dedicated to Christ. They're outgrowths of a soul that's truly been transformed by the Holy Spirit. And as we said before, they're not behaviors that we're allowed to just put off till some unknown time in the future when we've been redeemed, when we're actually part of the return of the kingdom of God.

We're all glorified. No, the Beatitudes, they're for us here and now. They're for you and they're for me in the way that we live our lives. And we don't always like this, and we don't always agree with it, because it means that we have to do something that none of us really want to do.

And it means that we have to submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, and we have to submit ourselves to Jesus as the Lord of our lives. And we all wanna claim Jesus as our Savior, because that's awesome, that's great, that's amazing, but it's also easy.

It's easy to say that Jesus is our Savior, but it's a lot harder to swallow, and it's a lot harder to understand that he's also Lord of our lives and everything that that means. And if he's Lord, that means that we are to be slaves to Christ.

We're to be slaves to the will of Christ, slaves to the will of God the Father. And I use the word slave, and I repeated it over and over, because it's significant. But in our culture, the word slave, it just has, it has so many negative connotations that a lot of us just sort of cringe when we hear it.

We cringe when we hear somebody say it. We have this visceral reaction. But the truth is, there's not a better word that describes the depth of our submission, or the depth of the submission that's required in our lives to the will of God.

But that's actually a good thing. And it's a good thing because Jesus is the only master whose will is entirely for your good. There's nothing bad that comes from you submitting your life entirely to what we read in Scripture or what we see that Jesus has for us.

And in 1 Timothy 2, 4 reminds us this. It says that God desires all men to be saved and all to come to the full knowledge of truth. And I keep reminding us this, because this really is what the Beatitudes are about.

And this is what the Sermon on the Mount is about. I want you to listen to these words from Sinclair Ferguson about the Sermon on the Mount. He says, living out the Sermon on the Mount can never be divorced from a right relationship to Jesus Christ.

That is what is so unique about this sermon. We can be helped through sermons given by preachers we do not know and never meet. But that is not the case with this preacher or his sermon. This teaching will change us only when we submit to the sovereign and gracious reign of the one who preaches it.

For the Sermon on the Mount enshrines in its teaching the authority and the lordship of Jesus himself. And he also says this, as you turn to the Sermon on the Mount, you ought to ask yourself if you have settled these issues in your own life.

And you ought to pray that through hearing Christ's voice in the sermon, you will grow in settled obedience to whatever he says to you. Anyway, this is where we find ourselves today as we consider Matthew 5 .5.

In LSB, this verse says, blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth. And I'm sure a lot of us are more accustomed to seeing this translated as the word meek rather than lowly, because that's, the vast majority of them say blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

And I'm honestly not 100 sure the reason for this particular translation. But I will say that this beatitude is very much calling back to Psalm 37 .11. That was one of the verses that we read as our call to worship.

Just as a reminder, Psalm 37 .11 says, but the lowly will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant peace. So maybe we use the term lowly to align with the Old Testament verses, because after all, these Old Testament verses are what Jesus would have been teaching from.

These are the things that he would have been quoting directly to the people that he was preaching to. But however you wanna translate it, this is another concept that would have been completely radical and completely shocking to the people that were hearing it.

Because remember, the people that were listening to the Sermon on the Mount, and just like we're reading it 2 ,000 years later, they've just heard some other things that are challenging. They've just heard a couple of other concepts that are fairly difficult to rationalize based on their ideas of what it meant to be religious, and based on our ideas of what it means to be a Christian.

Remember what they've been told. The first thing they've been told is that we have to be poor in spirit. That means we have to be humbled by the recognition of our spiritual status and what it is before God, which is very low.

And then they were told that we have to be in a state of mourning over what we just realized as our spiritual state before God, and we have to be in a state of mourning over those sins that we've just learned that we're committing all the time.

And not only that, now we and they have been told that we must be lowly, or we must be meek in order to be blessed, because it's the lowly, or the meek, that will inherit the earth. And the thing that's funny for us is that we're taking a week, or even more, between each one of these phrases.

We have all this time to process what it means. We're dissecting it, and we're analyzing it, and just spending 45 minutes to an hour on it. But the people that are listening to Jesus as he's preaching, they're getting these things just one after another.

They're just getting hit with one shocking statement after another. Imagine showing up, coming to church, to hear a prominent preacher, a visiting preacher. You're expecting to hear things and learn things from him, but then all of a sudden he starts telling you stuff that's just completely contradictory to everything that you think, completely contradictory to everything that you've been taught.

But not only that, what he's telling you is completely contradictory to what you see in the lives of the religious leaders that you're attending services with. So the first two phrases are disorienting, but the third one, this one's basically just completely outrageous.

And it's really not hard to understand, particularly if we move past just a surface level understanding of what's being said here. Because when we think of leaders, and we think of people who are in charge, and we think of people who we want to take over the earth, you probably have an image in mind of who that person is.

You know, not just the physical characteristics, but you probably have an image in mind of the personality that goes along with that. Again, we think of politicians, we think of people that just seem important.

And that person is probably bold. And that person is probably assertive. Maybe they're even aggressive. It's somebody who's not gonna back down from a challenge. You know, it's that sort of type A person, the person who knows what they want, who's not gonna stop until they get it, the person who is also not gonna let anybody else get in their way before they get it.

We think of terms like survival of the fittest, and only the strong survive. That's the type of person that we're thinking about. Because this is how we're culturally conditioned to think about these kind of things.

And as much as this is the case for us now, it was perhaps even more so for the Jewish believers that would have been in Jesus' audience at the time. Because as we've discussed before, the Jewish believers in these days, even despite all the differences in the different types of Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and some of the other ones, they believed different things, but they were all anticipating a Messiah.

And not only that, they were anticipating a Messiah who was gonna come as a military leader, a Messiah who was gonna come as a conqueror, maybe even a political hero, who was gonna use supernatural powers to overthrow the government.

Because one thing that we remember is the Roman government was pretty oppressive. I mean, they protected people, but at the same time, there was oppressive taxation, you know, they were physically afraid of the soldiers there.

So the Jews were picturing somebody who was gonna come and crush the government and restore Israel. So they expected the same things that we expect of a natural leader. But they probably expected these things on even a grander scale.

But whatever it was that they pictured, what they did not picture was a Messiah who was and also talked about being meek or who talked about being lowly or who was gentle and humble in heart like Jesus says in Matthew 11, 29.

John MacArthur says, "'The Jews understood military power and miracle power. "'They even understood the power of compromise, "'unpopular as it was, "'but they did not understand the power of meekness.'".

So as we roll into this beatitude, this teaching of the person that they thought was gonna be the Messiah, this teaching of the person that they thought was gonna be their savior was not only shocking, but it's confusing as well.

But we have to acknowledge that there were also clues. There were references in their scriptures about the nature of this person, particularly in Isaiah. Isaiah 52, 53, excuse me, verses two through three describe the suffering servant.

And it doesn't exactly paint the picture that we have in our minds or that they had in their minds. Those verses say this, and again, this is absolutely about Jesus. It says, "'For he grew up before him like a tender shoot "'and like a root out of parts ground.

"'He has no stately form or majesty "'that we should look upon him. "'He was despised and for the sake of men, "'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, "'and like one from whom men hide their face, "'he was despised and we did not esteem him.'".

So this is the description or part of the description of the prophet Isaiah regarding Jesus. So back to this idea of lowliness or back to this idea of meekness, and I'll probably just use both of those words, but what does it mean to be lowly or meek?

I've got three different definitions that I've found, and they all are a little bit different and they all have helpful context in them. So I'm gonna read them all. This is the first one. This author said, meekness is not weakness.

And that's a phrase that came up over and over in my reading, meekness is not weakness. But meekness does not use its power for its own defense or selfish purposes. Meekness is power completely surrendered to God's control.

That's important too. We'll be looking at that in a minute. Another one says that meekness or lowliness is submissiveness under provocation. It's the willingness to suffer rather than to inflict injury.

The meek person leaves everything in the hand of him who loves and cares. And then finally, one more for you. Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others.

To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves because we see there is nothing worth defending. And why would that be? Nothing worth defending. And what we really stop to reflect on on this in light of what we've already seen in the other Beatitudes is how they're all just tying together.

It starts, like we just said a minute ago, with the true recognition of your own poverty of spirit in the face of the holiness of God. And when we recognize this, we realize the nature of our sin. We realize the nature of our offense to God, which causes us to mourn.

In that position of mourning, though it ultimately leads to comfort, as we talked about last week, makes us realize that ultimately before God, apart from Jesus, that we have nothing of true eternal worth.

And it's really hard to try to assert yourself over someone else when you're in that position, when you have that true understanding. And this reminded me of a quote that Charles Spurgeon said that's sort of in line with this idea of being lowly.

He said this, "'Brother, if a man thinks ill of you, "'do not be angry with him, "'for you are far worse than he thinks you to be. "'A sense of electing love "'will render you base in your own sight.'".

I've always loved that quote. Don't be mad when somebody thinks you're bad because you're worse than they even know that you are. And if they were to find out truly what was in your heart, they would really think you're bad.

Not that they're in any position to judge anyway. But this is the recognition of the truth of your soul before God. And like I said, it makes it hard to put yourself in front of somebody else. It makes you hard, it makes it hard to elevate yourself over someone.

But remember, that very first line and the first definition, we can't forget that meekness is not weakness. Being lowly does not stop somebody from asserting themselves for what is truly right. But remember, there's only one thing that's truly right.

And it's not your opinion. And it's not your reputation. But how do we figure out exactly how to balance this? Well, obviously, we're gonna look at Scripture because Scripture provides us with a variety of examples that we can look to.

The first one we're gonna look at today, just in general, is the example of Moses. So Numbers 12, three tells us this. It says, now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.

And of course, that's fine to say, and it's in Scripture, so we know that it's true. But I wanna show you some specific examples of what this looks like in practice and specific examples of how this played out in the life of Moses.

Now, the first is how Moses decided to forego the comforts of life as Pharaoh's daughter to rejoin his people, the Israelites. Because if you remember the story of Moses, when they were killing all the male children, his mother dropped him in a basket and he floated down the river and Pharaoh's daughter picked him up and then Moses' own mother was able to raise him.

But he would have been able to just continue a life in luxury as royalty with Pharaoh. But when he saw the way his people were being treated by the Egyptians, he killed one and then he went off in hiding and he went back to live with his own people.

So this is, again, this is Moses giving up everything, giving up all worldly comforts and riches, things that we would find desirable in order to follow God. And that was before he was even called by God.

So the second thing that we see in the life of Moses is his response to the complaining of the Israelites once he became their leader. None of us like it when people complain and none of us like it when we're the ones that have to make decisions and people complain about that.

And Moses was in such a lofty position. But his response to the complaining of his people was to pray. It wasn't to just sort of snap back at them. For example, in Exodus 15, 24 through 25, we see this.

So the people grumbled at Moses saying, what shall we drink? Then he cried out to Yahweh, this is him praying, and Yahweh showed him a tree and he threw it into the waters and the waters became sweet.

And keep in mind, this was after he had led them through the Red Sea. This is after he had saved them from the Egyptians when God parted the Red Sea and they were able to all walk through and they're still complaining about stuff.

When they say, well, what are we gonna drink? I'm like, I don't know, bring your own water, right? Moses prays to God about this. And these people, they complained a lot. Exodus 16, they complained about not having food.

God delivered them manna and birds. And then another verse that struck me on this topic is Exodus 18, eight. Moses was talking to his father-in-law, Jethro. And Moses recounted to his father-in-law all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardship that had befallen them in the journey and how Yahweh had delivered them.

And that struck me as really interesting because it was Moses, despite being the leader of these people, giving all the glory to God for what had happened, giving all the glory to God for everything that had been accomplished.

He could have taken credit for a lot of this stuff, but he acknowledged that it was all for God's glory. And on that note, Moses would defend God, but he would not defend himself. So again, we're looking at lowliness and what it means to be lowly, but not to be weak.

So when God called Moses, Moses felt completely inadequate to the task, and he pleaded with God. He said in Exodus 3, 11, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? But Moses said to God, who am I that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?

And then Exodus 4, 10 is similar. Then Moses said to Yahweh, please, Lord, I have never been a man of words, neither recently nor in times past, nor since you have spoken to your slave. For I am one with a hard mouth and a hard tongue.

So he wouldn't, he would never stand up for himself, even with God asking him to do these things. His heart was humble, and he recognized his unworthiness to the point that he's pleading to God that he would not do these things.

But more on the topic of meekness not being weakness. Even though he would beg and plead to not be in that kind of position of leadership, he would be bold for God. And the story of the golden calf is a perfect example of that.

We find that in Exodus 32. And I wanna read verses 15 through 29. Moses had just been speaking with God on the mountain, and God told him that something was going on down there. That he had left Aaron in charge, and this is what happened.

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand, tablets which were written on both sides. They were written on one side and the other. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

Then Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, and he said to Moses, there is a sound of war in the camp. But he said, it is not the sound of the cry of triumph, nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing I hear.

Now it happened, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger burned. And I should say, I didn't read this part. This is where Aaron collected gold from all the people, and then he melted it down, and they turned it into the figure of a calf, and then they started worshiping it.

Despite the fact that God had brought them through all these things and all these places, the second Moses leaves, they're worshiping a golden idol. Now as it happened, that as soon as Moses came near the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hand and shattered them at the foot of the mountain, then he took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel to drink it.

Like, this is a guy who just said, no, God, I can't lead people. God, I can't speak to people. I can't talk to Pharaoh. He got so mad that these people were dishonoring God that he ground the calf up, put it in water, and he made them drink it.

Then Moses said to Aaron, what did this people do to you that you have brought such great sin upon them? And Aaron said, do not let the anger of my Lord burn. You know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil.

Indeed, they said to me, make gods for us who will go before us, for this Moses, this man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him, because he was gone for 40 days.

And I said to them, whoever has any gold, let them tear it off. So they gave it to me, and I threw it in the fire, and out came this calf. Now Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies.

So Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, whoever is for Yahweh, come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered together for him. So again, we're talking about meekness that's not weakness, because this next part is crazy.

And he said to them, thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, every man among you, put his sword upon his thigh and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.

So the sons of Levi did according to the words of Moses. And about 3 ,000 men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, be ordained today to Yahweh, for every man has been against his son and against his brother, in order that he may bestow a blessing upon you today.

So when it mattered, Moses, still meek, would stand up and defend the holiness and defend the righteousness of God. And there's plenty of other examples of meekness from great people in the Bible. But only one man showed us what it means to be perfectly lowly, and obviously, that's Jesus.

And in the case of Jesus, we'll start with the example of boldness. We're probably all familiar with the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. That's in Matthew 21. So let's just take a quick look at that.

I wanna read a couple of those verses to you. This is verses 12 and 13. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.

And he said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robber's den. A lot of people like to use this example of Jesus flipping over tables in the temple as to why they should be able to go out and insult or abuse or do whatever to people that they disagree with.

And that's not what's going on here. Jesus wasn't doing this for himself. He wasn't doing this for his own purposes or glory, but he was doing this to stand up for the purity of the temple and to stand up where the worship of God was happening because the religious leaders were corrupting this.

So just like Moses did the things he did for the glory of God, that's why Jesus, in his anger, was overturning tables at the temple and driving people out. We also know that on multiple occasions, Jesus was questioned by religious leaders or by politicians, and he never felt the need to defend himself.

So this is, again, where meekness comes in. This is John 18, verses 19 through 23. The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching, and Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world.

I always taught in synagogues and in the temple where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you question me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them. Behold, they know what I said.

And when he had said this, one of the officers standing nearby gave Jesus a slap, saying, is that the way you answer the high priest? And Jesus answered him, if I have spoken wrongly, bear witness of the wrong, but if rightly, why do you strike me?

And this, this one scene, this one example is a perfect example of lowliness. It's a perfect example of meekness because Jesus is not putting up some kind of grand defense of himself to try to restore his reputation or try to get out of something that's going on.

Jesus is subverting himself to the will of God because we all know what happened not too long after that, and we know that Jesus could have gotten out of that situation at all. But again, he's acting according to the will of God.

He's not acting out of self-preservation. He's not acting out of a desire to gain credit for what he deserved. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Philippians 2 .8 tells us this. It says, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And it was in that ultimate sacrifice, this is where Jesus laid down his life for you. Jesus laid down his life for me because it was the will of the Father that he would do so. But he didn't do this out of weakness.

He didn't do this because God the Father is browbeating him into it and he kinda didn't really wanna do it, but he was afraid to say anything about it. He did it out of the strength of his meekness. And again, I hope that I'm connecting these dots well enough that meekness is complete submission to God, but it doesn't mean that people walk all over you in whatever way they want to.

That's not meekness either. So what does lowliness or meekness look like in our lives today? That's the thing that I wanna spend the rest of our time talking about. So as we think about these scriptural examples, we think about what we've seen in the story of Moses and Jesus, and you could find many other examples.

There's two ways that we can look at meekness. The first way is meekness towards God, and the second way is meekness towards others. Now, first we'll look at lowliness towards God. And again, this is what we've been saying.

It's submission to God's will. Meekness toward God, lowliness toward God, comes along with acknowledging that Jesus is the Lord of our lives. But not only the acknowledgement, but it comes through the living in ways that align with his will.

And a lot of times, this is in conflict with our own preferences, or it's in conflict with our comfort zone. And a lot of times, it's very much in conflict with our fleshly desires. It's in conflict with the things that we want to do, but know that we shouldn't.

And there has to be an acceptance that God knows best, even when it doesn't seem that way to us, even when we don't quite understand why that is. And we see this spirit in the life of Samuel, and in the life of Eli, actually, this is who is saying this.

When Samuel was called by God, Eli asked Samuel to tell him everything that had happened. And 1 Samuel 3, 18, after Samuel had told Eli this, Eli says, it is Yahweh, let him do what seems good in his eyes.

So the first way that we're meek towards God, or that we're lowly before God, is when we accept his will, and we live according to his will. Now, the second way that we can be meek or lowly towards God is flexibleness to God's word, but not with God's word.

And this is what we've been talking about with the beatitudes. This is why I stand up here every week, and you're probably getting tired of me saying that this might be difficult. This beatitude, the behavior that this requires, might not be something that you wanna do, but a lowly spirit takes God's word and conforms itself to that word.

It doesn't try to take the word and bend it and shape it, you know, take the Bible and sort of like work it in there that way. No, this word is a firm foundation for our lives, and that means that we shape our lives according to what the word says.

We don't try to insist on ways to conform God's word to what we want it to be, because ultimately what that is is not lowliness, it's not humility, it's pride. And like we said last week, pride has no place in the Christian's life.

So lowliness towards God, it can be challenging, but most of us would say that that's something we could do. It's easier because it's God. But the second category is a lot harder, and that's lowliness toward others.

Again, it's easier to be meek before God, it's easier to be lowly before God. It's much easier than it is to be lowly before someone else, like your spouse. Or your friends, or your family, or your coworkers.

Because whether we want to admit it or not, pretty much all of us like to keep score. And we do it out of self-preservation, we do it to make sure that we don't get taken advantage of, but even more so, we do it to make sure that we get everything that we think we deserve.

Everything that we think other people owe to us. We desperately want the honor, or the love, or the respect, or the submission that we think we should be getting from other people. We also have this desire to protect our reputation.

When someone insults us, we wanna make sure that we get our response out there, we wanna make sure that we present our case, we wanna make sure that if someone insults us or says something bad about us, that everybody knows how wrong they are.

And we wanna insult those people back too, because it might have hurt us. And in turn, we wanna hurt them just as much as they hurt us. And guess what? This is exactly what we do to our family members as well.

This is what we do to the people. This is not just people out in the world, this is people that are closest to us. I've done it, I've been guilty of this, absolutely. And this is not what the beatitude says, this is not meekness, and this is not lowliness towards others.

Thomas Watson said, meekness is a grace whereby we are enabled by the Spirit of God to moderate our passion. And again, here we go with the countercultural type of concepts. But lowliness, lowliness involves several things, and this won't be an exhaustive list, but it's a few of them.

But lowliness involves bearing the insults and injuries of others. Lowliness or meekness requires us to endure those things for the sake of our witness to God. Lowliness or meekness does not allow us to quickly respond in anger or revenge.

Ecclesiastes 7 .9 says, do not be eager in your spirit to be vexed, for vexation rests in the bosom of fools. And Romans 12 .19 says, never taking your own revenge, beloved. Instead, leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

So being meek and being lowly is completely counter to taking revenge on someone else for something that they've done or for something that they've said. It's counter to having to even the score. Lowliness also involves the decision not to speak poorly of others.

We had this verse up on our wall for a long time, and I think it's really a great one. It's Ephesians 4 .29, which says, let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

There's also verses in James about taming the tongue. So much damage can be done with the tongue. And lowliness and meekness is completely in contrast to that sort of attitude or that sort of lifestyle.

Lowliness also involves forgiveness. And this one should be obvious as well. And it should be obvious why. But just in case, Ephesians 4 .32 says, instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God and Christ also has graciously forgiven you.

So forgiveness is important for all of us. And again, we go back to the other Beatitudes that we've read. And if you think this is gonna change, it's really not. They're just all gonna start stacking on top of each other, and we're gonna have to keep going back and looking how they tie in.

But I wanna get across the message, if I haven't already, that understanding your position before God that is only made right through Jesus should help you see that you don't deserve anything from other people.