The Domestication Of Man - [Matthew 5;5]

Just a couple quick announcements. I want to have a prayer this morning. Pastor John Piper has prostate cancer. He's going to have a huge surgery in a couple months, radical prostatectomy. Don Whitney, who has come here and preached, even from this pulpit, he has colon cancer and his colon is not healing properly.

They put the colon back together, reanastomosis they call it, and it's not working. I just want to have a special prayer for those two pastors, as well as Pastor Ron Porch in Sacramento, and I preached there several weeks ago on the last legs of chemotherapy.

It sounds like he'll make it and he'll be living. And so we just want to pray for these men that preach the Word of God, and their families, too. So would you bow with me, please? Lord, we just have been singing about, to you alone be the glory.

And Father, that's what we would ask. For Pastor Piper, Pastor Whitney, Pastor Porch. Our hearts desire, and their families' desires, that they would be healed from this cancer, that you give them many more faithful years of service.

But you have taught us in your Word, and your Spirit has bore witness, as He has illumined our mind of the Scriptures, that it's not about our desires, it's about your glory, and we would ask that you'd be glorified in this situation.

We would have thought, even years ago, with James Boyce dying, that you could receive glory from that. Yet you are sovereign, and you have taught us to willingly bow our knee, and to say with Job, the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. We pray for the Pipers, and the Whitney's, and the Porch's, wisdom for the doctors, love from their local churches that would be poured out to the family, and Lord, that you would increase the family's trust in you, that they would, in fact, do what Solomon said many years ago, that they would trust in you, Yahweh, with all their heart.

Lord, that you would protect them from leaning on their own understanding. Lord, that you'd help them acknowledge you in all their ways, including medical. And Lord, that we would praise you, because you would make their paths straight.

We commit you to them, their ministries, and Lord, we would pray in times like this, that you would give us a hearty and healthy reminder that one day we too will die. As a matter of fact, we are dying now, and I would pray, Lord, for me as I preach, that you would help me to be like Richard Baxter, having a dying man preach to dying men and women.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Makes things kind of sober, doesn't it? One day we'll face God, and then for us Christians, the verdict will be given, not guilty, because of Jesus Christ. While I'm kind of making announcements, let me just give you one more that will help us even as we want to learn from God's Word.

My friend on the West Coast, I was there in the summer preaching and just visiting him a few weeks ago. He's been faithfully preaching through Titus at his church as an interim pastor, and they decided Friday not to make him their senior pastor.

A committee of nine people got together and said, we do not want you to be our pastor. And these were the three reasons, in no particular order. Number one, he doesn't have enough experience. I think he's been in gospel ministry for 13 years now.

Number two, he doesn't know how to build a church. I thought that was Jesus' job. He will build his church. And number three, his preaching offends unbelievers. I said, those are three good things to get fired for.

As a matter of fact, he's having to preach today. One person on the search committee, she said, your preaching isn't relational enough for me. I don't relate to it. In the 1700s here in New England, here's how you gauged a sermon.

Was it theologically correct? Was it faithful to the scriptures? Was it precise? And was it accurate? And today, the whole culture, according to Ann Douglas, even an unbeliever at Harvard, wrote about the feminization of America, and instead of having the pulpit be a place where the truth is proclaimed on the behalf of God, that we've turned it into this thing where I didn't relate to it.

The pastor didn't seem warm today. I didn't smile enough. He didn't kind of identify with us, the people. And so I told my friend, I think that was the condemnation, really, of that church. Jonathan Edwards used to say, if you've got a Bible-teaching pastor and he leaves, you can count that as God's judgment against that church because people heap up teachers after their own desires.

And so this morning, I praise God that I get to preach to a group of people who know there's no way I could build this church, who know that the gospel, by definition, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, offends the unbeliever, and who wants to hear it anyway?

I have a little fourth thing they could have probably added for my friend, that his preaching sometimes offends believers. Have you ever been offended when somebody preaches? I hope so. I can tell a lot about a congregation, according to Doug Wilson's theology, that people that want soft words from the pulpit all the time have hard hearts that don't want to be rocked.

But on the flip side, people that have soft hearts want hard words, Jeremiah kind of words that are hard like a hammer because we realize, throughout the week, our heart kind of grows recalcitrant and hardened again, and we want the Word of God to kind of break us up and to need us, as it were, so we'd be soft and pliable to obey God.

Knowing what the risen Christ has done in our life, we want to more live to be like Him. And as God calls us to be holy, so too we want to be holy by the grace of God that is in us because of the power of the resurrected Christ.

Hard-hearted people want soft words. People that have soft hearts want hard words. You probably know where I'm going, because if you turn your Bible to Matthew chapter 5, here come some hard words. Matthew chapter 5, please.

We're going verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount, just enjoying every bit of it, every little detail, right down to the words and the phrases and the sentences because the Bible deserves study, in-depth study.

And certainly there's a place in our lives for reading through the Bible. I'm trying to read through the Old Testament in a Hebrew-English translation, and I'm just going pretty quick. But on Sunday morning, I want to teach us that the Word of God deserves close, detailed, studied.

The Sermon on the Mount, preached by the greatest preacher who's ever lived, Jesus Christ. His longest sermon. P .S., the elders just gave me a raise, and so I always preach the percentage raise that was given to me that translates into increased minutes of the sermon.

So, here we go. I don't think I can quite do this one because it was such a large raise, but we'll just preach for a good long time. Where else do we go? We want to hear the words of life. God has given us new hearts, and those new hearts now have a love for what we used to hate.

Did you realize that? Before I was saved, if someone said, why don't you go hear a sermon? I would say, Mom and Dad, why are you making me, number one. And number two, as long as it's short. Number three, as long as right after the service I quit and get out of there because I don't want to fellowship with anybody or do anything because they might ask me a question I don't know about.

I just need to get out of there as fast as I can. And all of a sudden, God saved me, and I liked preaching. I love preaching. I love to be preached, too. And I like long preaching. Paul preached so long, by the way, people fell asleep and fell down out of the window and were dead.

I don't want to go that far. And I love fellowship. And you love fellowship. And you love preaching. And that is a gift from God. Our favorite people in the Bible, from Moses to John the Baptist to Paul to Peter, etc., and our beloved, risen Savior Jesus Christ were preachers.

God had one Son and He made Him a preacher. And here Jesus is preaching really an expansion of one word. If you look back to chapter 4 in Matthew 4, verse 17, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount is an expanded sermon of this word, this one word.

Matthew 4, verse 17, From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. If you've ever asked the question What is repentance? You can find out the detailed answer to that question in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

And repentance means to change your mind. You used to think about life this way. God saves you and gives you a new heart and the Spirit of God dwells in you. And then you think about things the opposite way.

And here Jesus comes preaching repentance. The kingdom of God is at hand. In chapter 5, 6, and 7 enlarges on that very theme. And it's really for Christians and for non-Christians. For those of us who are Christians there is a way that we need to have our lives typified by repentance.

And for those who aren't Christians need to come to the cross through only one way and that is through repentance. This was a great sermon for lots of reasons. One of the reasons I like it is because it was contrary to what was going on at the time.

This was something that was different. The people were not used to hearing this. They were ready for this prince to come, this Messiah, who would deal harshly with the Roman oppressors and get rid of them all since they had taken them over about 63 BC when Pompey annexed Palestine.

This was different because the Pharisees said, you know, it's all about externals. It's the way you look, it's the way you dress, it's the way you act, it's the way you seed, tithe, cumin and other things.

And Jesus comes along and says, let me give you an announcement. Not only repentance, but then he says I'm going to give you blessings, conditional blessings. If you take a look at the Sermon on the Mount, you see opening up verse 3 of chapter 5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, it starts with one word in the New American Standard and that word is what?

Blessed. And sometimes we think it kind of means happy, but really it's more than that. This is the word that is described when God approves you, when God finds approval in you, you are blessed. It's always an act of condescension where here we have a great thrice holy God and he approves us.

It's certainly a condescending act that he would do something like that, that he would reach down and bless us. We get the word blessing from the Latin beatus for beatitude, same thing. So these are blessings of God similar to Psalm 1, how blessed is the man.

How can God singularly favor a person? And what kind of person gets the favor of God? And then we're describing, we're seeing here described all these different kinds of favor of God. Jesus is coming again a second time to judge, yes?

But this first time he came to save. And he's telling people about his great saving nature. But there's a kingdom that he's calling them to live in because he's the king and it's going to take a different kind of living than living in the kingdom of Titus Nero or any other kind of king.

By the way, did you notice? This word has nothing to do with feelings. I don't feel blessed. This is a declaration, almost a judicial declaration. Not of how they might feel, but what God thinks of them.

Today's message will mainly be to unbelievers because here's the kingdom. How do you get in? We'll talk about that and to believers next week. But before you just kind of zone out, be patient with me and also you can think about even how do you evangelize and I think you'll be encouraged.

So let's go through the Beatitudes. We're up to number 3. Let's quickly review 1 and 2. Beatitude number 1, found in verse 3 of Matthew 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs, literally in the Greek, theirs alone is the kingdom of heaven.

The objective statement of blessing of God to these people, to the poor in spirit. That basically means people who are beggars. They know spiritually, I'm a beggar. The word came from a word where you would kind of crouch and you would cringe and you would not want to look up into the eyes of the person that you were asking for alms from.

This is one who says I have no spiritual worth. I realize that I am emaciated spiritually and God you're going to have to help me. Why did this happen? Because Adam fell and we in Adam fell and he was our federal representative.

But God says to you, these kind of people that recognize the spirits work in their life and that they're poverty, they have nothing, they're bankrupt, that was prayed earlier today, that they get the kingdom.

Those kind of people get the kingdom of God, the privileges of Messiah's reign. Let me switch it to a positive summary statement. Oh the approval by God for people who have realized their own spiritual helplessness and have put their entire trust in God.

Those people are blessed. Beatitude number two found in verse four. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. It's one thing the first beatitude to think about something intellectually.

It's another to experience it emotionally and that's what's happening here. I know that I have nothing before God and that's how God saved us. He made us realize we had nothing to bring to God and then there was something that was emotional to that because if it was real knowledge it translated to our entire being and here these people are mourning over what?

They're mourning over their own sin. D .A. Carson said a personal grief over personal sin. Out of all the words for sorrow and sadness and grief this is the most extreme. Wailing, weeping, just the harshest grief and sorrow.

This is the kind of sorrow that we would use when we would wail over those who have died in our family. But this is a spiritual weeping and wailing because it realizes how holy God is and how sinful we are and we need God's help and God says when you realize that and you don't try to put up false pretences anymore and you don't try to make excuses and you don't know how to be a victim, those kind of people that say I own my sin.

God help me. God says what? Get away from me. Go on, go on, go on. God said you're blessed. You're blessed. It's amazing to me that God would bless anyone. The question is not should God damn anyone? The question is why would God bless anyone?

The third beatitude from unpredictable Jesus I call Jesus sometimes when he's preaching through these, he's certainly not safe or tame or anything else. It's upside down. It's astounding. It's surprising.

Blessed are the, what? I think my Bible reads blessed are the proud. Blessed are the intimidating. Blessed are the aggressive. Blessed are the bold. Blessed are the domineering. Blessed are the strong natural leaders.

Blessed are the ambitious. Maybe that's the wrong Bible. Maybe that's Anton LaVey's Bible and not the Bible. Blessed are the meek. Who Tolstoy called the terrible meek. How can there be blessings for the meek?

The people that get run over. The Casper milquetoast of the world. One man said, some people are just normally nice and easy going but then again, so are some dogs. When we think of meek, we think of weakness.

They don't have any backbone. They don't have any intestinal fortitude. They don't have a spine. They're just kind of limp-wristed and wishy-washy. They get railroaded all the time. Lloyd-Jones says, the world thinks in terms of strength and power, of ability, self-assurance and aggressiveness.

That is the world's idea of conquest and possession. The more you assert yourself and express yourself, the more you organize and manifest your powers and ability, the more likely you are to succeed and get on.

Isn't that true? Go after them. The world's a pitcher of Kool-Aid and drink it up. How'd that get in the sermon? Just guzzle it. Just go for it. You've got to be aggressive. And here, contra to our normal thinking, by the way that's a good test for Bible teaching, does it strike me odd from what I normally would think or what I would think before I was saved?

He says, blessed are the meek. Blessed are the gentle for they shall inherit the earth. Everybody else is climbing to get their share of inheritance and God says, they're going to inherit it. What do we mean by meek?

Or gentle? What we don't want to do when we study the Bible is ask this question. What does this verse mean to me? You know, you all sit around in kind of a Socratic, what does this verse mean to you?

What does it mean to you? Well, I feel this. We're looking for one thing and what's that? What does the verse mean to God when he wrote it? What did the verse mean to Jesus? Meek can mean all kinds of things.

Gentleness can mean all kinds of things. But in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, what did Jesus mean when he said the word meek? It's like Grace, he said to me yesterday, we got all the dress up clothes out, we were cleaning the attic and putting the Christmas things away and got the dress up clothes out and she had a little tutu on and she thought, is she just a little tutu running around ballerinas?

Casey, you'll like this, she said it's kind of a funny word, the word tutu. It's a funny word tutu, where do we get that? You can even think of the word too and all our different definitions for that and even a word that has the same spelling, is this meek?

Is this humble? Is this gentle? What is this? Because lexically dictionary wise, the word could mean not overly impressed with one's self importance, gentle humble, considerate mild. What does it mean in context?

Let me ask you this question, is the sequence important? If there are eight Beatitudes, is the sequence of going from poor in spirit to mourning over sin is there some connection coming with this next one here meekness?

And the answer is there's got to be because there's some context to this, there's almost this facet of the diamond of repentance, you say well I'm just going to look at it from a different angle, as God is granting someone repentance, what do they go through?

Poor in spirit mourning over sin and now meekness, so how can that be tied in with this area of salvation as God is saying if you want to follow me the king, this is what I expect you to be. Sequence is surely important.

He just didn't make these up, whatever came to his mind we realize we have nothing this is the first Beatitude, we're sorrowful over it and then we have I think the best synonym for the word meek here in the context is submissive.

We're submissive we don't try to justify ourselves before God anymore and we're willing to let God do whatever he wants with us we have a true estimate of ourselves as Lloyd Jones says, you see yourself as you really are, do you remember that when you got saved?

I do, all of a sudden you have this weight upon you where you thought you were pretty good, oh my neighbor I compare myself to my neighbor and I'm not too bad and compared myself to other people I'm really good and all of a sudden here you get a true estimate of yourself before God and then you realize well whatever he does it must be right, I will submit to that.

I could say lordship. D .A. Carson said a controlled desire to see the other's interest advance ahead of one's own God. You are the king. Whatever you decide I'll submit to. I like what MacArthur said.

The essential difference between being poor in spirit and being meek are gentle. Maybe that poverty in spirit focuses on our sinfulness whereas meekness focuses on God's holiness. We're relying as meek people coming to the Lord in salvation to say God you give us what we have coming.

You are the one who decides we have a true view of ourselves. You decide, we'll take a lowly place. Meek people in the Bible took a lowly place so that others might exalt them. They didn't sit in the front, sorry Carl they didn't sit in the front so that they could have that spot, they sat in the back so the king could say no.

You sit up here. I realize I don't deserve anything. I'm going to sit in the very back row of salvation. And if God pulls me to the front in a gentle way in a humble way, I'll accept what he does. I submit throw myself on the mercy of the court for you.

Greek scholars, the Old Testament was translated into Greek since the New Testament was Greek. The Old Testament translated into Greek can be insightful and scholar Nolan said that in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, 8 out of 9 times this word that's used in the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 .5 the common quality is rather than the state of rather the state of powerlessness inability to forward one's own cause.

And in every case God either is, does, will, may be expected to or should come to the rescue. Did you get that? We have a state of powerlessness. We can't forward ourselves. We can't get to the front row to be saved.

We sit in the back and say God your will be done. Contra to, if you think you've saved yourself how can you be a Christian? If you've saved yourself by your own strength, can you be a Christian? No submission to God's will.

Pouring spirit, mourning and then realizing God, I won't justify myself anymore, I won't defend myself anymore. I'm sitting in the back, have mercy. In the old days this word was used of animals that were domesticated broken animals.

You take a horse and it's all wild and then the trainer breaks it. Then it is subservient, it is submissive. It will do what the master wants. This is a broken horse with a saddle in the bit. Lord, I'm not a Christian, I realize I'm sinful, I realize what I deserve.

I'm even mourning over my sins. Now, you've caused me to recognize both of those and now I'm just broken and whatever way you guide me I'm willing to go. The Pharisees were all saying we're in, and we're in the special part of heaven and we're going there because we're good on the outside and this is all internal.

What kind of blessing do they get here? They're approved of God and then God gives us promised blessing. Look at verse 5, chapter 5. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Every Christian each Christian, every redeemed person they inherit.

If you're back in the old days the first born son gets what? Double the inheritance. Everybody else can divvy the rest up here, each and every person who has, by the grace of God realized their own condition and fallen on the mercy of the court gets this kind of prosperity.

I don't mean health, wealth, prosperity. What do I mean? Does your Bible show in verse 3, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is that in bold letters, capital letters that is right out of the old. What? Testament.

Would you turn back there, this is a verse that came right out of psalm 37. Psalm 37 is where we get this beatitude. I wonder if Jesus ever studied the old testament. You shouldn't have laughed. Do you ever study the old testament?

70 of our Bible. Kim had an insightful thing the other day she said, if a seeker sensitive church would just read through a few of the minor prophets they wouldn't be seeker sensitive too long. If you ever get asked, what's the theme of a minor prophet.

You can just say, judgment the wrath of God, and he does have a remnant. People don't understand that side of God, but this is not the wrath side, this is a side that shows his blessing. Here Jesus is offering paradise restored and he takes it right from psalm 37 verse 11.

But the humble will inherit the land. The same word there for Hebrew in the Greek translation of the Hebrew is our word in Matthew chapter 5 verse 5 and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

Those humble who delight themselves will delight themselves. Well what's the theme of this whole psalm? Look up a little higher into verse 3. It's a psalm of trust. Did you know what? It's a psalm of submission.

It's a psalm of the New Testament definition. And the beatitudes on subservient, submissive people. Psalm 37 verse 3 trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land. Cultivate faithfulness. Literally feed on truth.

Look at verse 5. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him and he will do it literally. Commit means roll off the burdens of your own life, roll off the burdens of yourself onto the shoulders of the Lord.

He's big enough to take care of it and you just look to him. It's about submissiveness, it's about trust. Look at verse 9 for evil doers will be cut off. But those who wait literally the best translation of wait is eagerly anticipate, those who eagerly anticipate with eyes of trust and submission will inherit the land.

Jesus is using this Old Testament quote to talk about kingdom entrance now certainly there's many blessings but we don't need to relegate the earthly blessing of it really inheriting the land as something temporal expositor's bible commentary says there's no need to interpret the land metaphorically as having reference to geography or space.

But there's other blessings and there's that blessing for the people who don't assert themselves. The people who don't express themselves. The people who aren't great leaders, God says I just give you everything, it's yours.

Romans 8 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ he gives it all. What else about this word blessing on people who are meek and submissive. Let me show you by opposite illustration a kind of faith that people have that's not meek and that it's empty, turn to James chapter 2 if you would, what I'm trying to do now especially for the people who aren't Christians in our congregation this morning and there certainly are some I'm trying to show you what Jesus requires that you can't do on your own but that Jesus requires you to see your spiritual bankruptcy, for you to mourn over your sin and for you to be so submissive to God that you say God your will be done, anything you do.

I'm willing to follow and let me show you a group of beings that had no meekness, gentleness or submissiveness at all and that group of beings are demons. When I think of demons I think of everything but meekness.

Don't you do those words go together. A meek demon assaulted me a very gentle demon attacked Paul and gave him a thorn in the flesh. You just don't think of that because we don't think of these demons being submissive and willing to say to God I'll sit in the back and if you bring me to the front I'm willing to accept that, we see the opposite especially with Satan and being prideful, Satan is certainly coming to God saying because I'm prideful, because I want the worship I want the adoration, I am the new trinity as it were, you should worship me, I should get worship with you at the least and instead of being at the place of biblical meekness where we're willing to go to the back and if God saves us great, here's the group of beings, one third of all the satanic angels, satanic demons now come to the front and say we deserve it, but it's weird some demons are better off than people, let me show you how but at the whole time I want you to remember how this is anti meekness, anti submission, James chapter 2 verse 19 you believe that God is one, you do well the demons also believe and shudder let me talk about non meek demon faith for a little bit let me give you just several, if you're taking an outline, it's hard to outline one beatitude, but let me give you a few things about demon faith for those of you that have to outline, here you go demon faith number one, believes in the existence of God, do demons believe that there's a God they believe there's a God, even by implication in James 2 verse 19 you believe that God is one, you do.

Well, the demons also believe, demons believe in God it's no great thing to say, well I believe in God because people can still believe in God without having the meek, gentle submissive heart that says God, I'm willing to call you Lord and follow you.

Number two demons believe in the unity of the Godhead, I think they believe in the Trinity, but 2 .19 doesn't let us know that, but it does say that God is one. They believe in the unity of the Godhead.

Certainly not James. He says you believe that here he says these demons believe that God is one. That's amazing to me. They're better than the Aryans they're better than the Mormons, they're better than Jehovah's Witnesses, they believe in this one God number three, and yet they're still not meek, number three, they're monotheistic.

You believe God is one, what's the great Shema by the Jews, hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord our God is one, can you imagine they believe there's only one God. They don't believe in a bunch of gods.

Four, demons have an orthodox creed. We have a statement of faith here. How many people have read our statement of faith. If you're not a member and you haven't read it you probably should, otherwise you're going to just have to trust us.

We don't want you to do that, we want you to read the statement of faith. The demons I believe would affirm our statement of faith. Would they Jesus died on the cross substitutionary atonement raised from the dead, and the same body that he died in and was glorified is going to one day come back, etc, etc.

They know the apostles creed. They know the books of the bible orthodox. They know, but just because you know something, it doesn't mean you're going to go to heaven. Demons faith is number five, intellectual.

It's not this kind of Kierkegaardian kind of leap of faith. They use their mind. They realize with their brains that they have, as it were. The demons also believe intellectually. They know. Is that enough?

What I'm trying to say is, you can know a lot about God even with your mind and still not come close to being meek and submissive to what God requires. By the way this is all because people love their sin more than they love God, they realize that God is true.

They realize that there's a heaven, that there's a hell that Jesus was really real. But they love their sin so much they can't let go of it. They don't want to let go of it. And lastly, number six demon faith is emotional.

Oh, I love this word. Do you see that in your text? James 2 .19 you can have a meek faith that has no no emotion, no what am I driving at? If you've got real faith there's meekness, but here's something that's less than saving faith, that less than meekness the demons also believe in.

What? Let me teach you a new Greek word, ready? Phsouson. Phsouson p-h-r-i-s-s o-u-s-i-n. Phsouson kind of sounds good, doesn't it? I kind of like that word, just throw it out. Sacerdotalism.

Propitiation. They're just some words that just roll off your tongue. Phsouson. You know what that is? That's the word that if you see your dog run up to another dog and they don't like each other, something happens to the back of that dog's hair.

The hair on the dog's back. And what happens? Stand straight up, that's the word. Demons know all about God intellectually and they so know him emotionally. They are afraid of God. Don't send me off until it's the time, Jesus.

They're afraid of God. By the way, it's a present tense, which means the demons believe and keep on shuddering. They're always shuddering, they're always afraid. It's the horror that has the hair on the back to stand on end.

It's very similar to the Latin word, horreo horror. Interestingly, in Jewish tradition the demons were called in Hebrew, sha-yar-yam hairy one used in Job 4. The hair of my flesh bristled up used in Daniel 7.

And visions in my mind kept alarming me. In some Jewish writings this word is used to show what happens to demons during exorcism. They would shudder, what's the point? The point is would you ever consider demons to be having meek faith?

Well, of course not. Because they're not submissive. You can know a lot about God, you can intellectually know God. You can experience God emotionally and still not have meekness. And Jesus said, when it comes to blessings and approval of God and entrance into my kingdom, blessed are the meek and the meek only, those who are submissive, not those who just take Jesus for hell insurance.

But those who abandon their own merit, their proper view of themselves, they have and they take a lowly place in the back and say, God you're gonna have to promote me and it's gonna have to be of you.

Let me put it in really modern terms the people that are meek will accept Jesus as Savior and as Lord. It is an outlandish lie to think that you can have Jesus as Savior and later you make him Lord, just between us, you don't make Jesus Lord Jesus.

Jesus is Lord. 10 years ago you told me that I would live to see literate evangelicals some with doctorates and a seminary teaching, arguing for the reality of an eternal salvation divinely guaranteed that may have in it no repentance, no discipleship no behavioral change no practical acknowledgement of Christ as Lord in one's life, no perseverance of the saints, and I might add no meekness and submissiveness.

I would have told you, Packer says that you were out of your mind stark, staring, bonkers is the British phrase I would have probably used the king is asking the people to be submissive, just think about a regular king.

The king comes into town and goes, you can be part of the kingdom, but you don't have to bow the knee. That's okay. Just do the opposite of what I say, it's no problem. I'll tell you where those people went.

If they would have had guillotines, they would have went to the guillotine wasn't devised yet. True faith submits to the lordship of Christ. Yes? Absolutely. But here's what happens in our minds. We have a friend or a loved one who doesn't submit to the lordship of Christ and we have to articulate a faith in our mind to somehow let us sleep at night properly, because we realize if it's the lordship of Christ and being meek and submissive, that this person who I'm married to, this person who's my child this person who's my grandfather isn't going to get in, because they're anything but meek and poor of spirit and everything else.

So we construct this in our mind, somehow hoping to sleep better at night when we should just entrust our family members to the goodness of God, will not the judges of the universe do right? God, I can't somehow mess with your word to make myself feel better at night, thinking that they're in so we lower the standards of salvation.

Out goes poverty of spirit, out goes mourning over sin, turn it into a disease or some syndrome or something else as if they're a victim. It's like the pastor in Tulsa that just this last week, Southern Baptist Church went out and solicited a male prostitute, now he's out of the ministry and the Southern Baptist Church has a thing on the website saying it's time for him to heal.