In this world, expectations are incredibly important. Because if we have the wrong expectations of someone or something, then it’s pretty much certain that we’re going to be disappointed. So … what do you expect of God? I mean, are you expecting Him to bless you or not? Is He an old man with a big stick, or is He a kind and gentle Father … or both of those things? And if He is supposed to bless you, exactly what does that blessing look like? As things turn out, our expectations of God are really, really important. So let me ask you again, what do you expect of God?

You know what I think is one of the hardest things about following Jesus? It’s not so much that some people think I’m a little odd – how can he be all religious like that? Well religious is one thing I’m not. It’s not what other people might think of me – although of course in many parts of the world believing in Jesus is a death sentence, literally. There are people listening today who are listening in secret because if they said they believed in Jesus openly they’d be persecuted. But that’s not the case where I live.

The hardest thing for me here is that God doesn’t always dish up what I expect Him to dish up in my life. The hardest thing for me is I, like most other people, have grown up with the world’s idea of success, the world’s definition of success all around me.

We’re influenced by our culture and our culture tells us, society tells us, the advertising industry tells us that we’re successful if we have lots of money, a nice house, two cars, big flat screen TV’s dotted all around the place. We’re successful if life’s going really well and people can look at us and say, “Wow he’s successful!” “My goodness isn’t she successful!”

And we kind of equate that idea of success, an idea that’s been so deeply ingrained into our nature day after day, with the idea of God’s blessing. We imagine that when God blesses us we’ll be successful. Does that sound familiar? And today and over this week, in fact the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be chatting about why that one thing – this idea of success and blessing being the same thing – is one of the toughest things about following Jesus in this day and age.

Now I wonder if in your heart of hearts if you’re one of these crazies like me who follow Jesus. I wonder if in your heart of hearts when you hear that word ‘blessing’ your default position, your instant response is to equate God’s blessing with success here and now. I think there’s some of that in each one of us. Yeah, yeah, I know that Jesus said in this world we’d have tribulation, John chapter 16, verse 33.

We know that we’ll be persecuted; we know that it will be a hard road and Jesus said it will be a narrow road, a tough road to follow. We know all that theory but that’s for other people. You and me, we want to pull up next to this idea of success, we so want to equate success with God’s blessing that we kind of ignore all those other bits for us, the bits about suffering, persecution, laying down our lives and taking up our cross and following Jesus because success has been so powerfully woven into who we are. It’s an alluring concept, and when God talks about blessing the two seem to go so well together that before we know it we’ve got our little heart set on success. We’ve got our own little prosperity doctrine tucked away in our hearts. We go through all our religious motions on the outside but on the inside we get to firmly believing that God’s going to bless us with success.

Now of course sometimes He does, absolutely, but no one’s life is completely successful. There are people listening today whose marriages are falling apart, there are people listening today who are serving the Lord in some far flung dark hole of a place and nothing they seem to be doing just at the moment is having any impact.

There are people struggling through things at work, relationships, family problems, kids on drugs. There are people who have just had a loved one die. There are people … And when you’re in that place you want to scream out and say God? Blessing? How dare this joker on the radio talk to me about blessing, I’m not blessed by God, look at the mess, look at the pain, look at the circumstances I’m in.

Now we all go through those trials and we do. Now I want to come right back to why this is one of the hardest things for me in following Jesus and I suspect for you too. It’s because deep down we expect God’s blessing to equal worldly success and when God doesn’t stump up with the success we’re expecting then it feels like everything we believe about God, everything we’ve struggled for in following Jesus is a lie. It’s like a false promise.

You and I know when we stop and think about it, that a mismatch of expectations is always going to cause pain and conflict. If you expect me to do something or to say something or to behave in a certain way or deliver something and I don’t meet that expectation you’re going to be disappointed or angry or any number of other things with me, right? And if I do it over and over again eventually, after me missing all your expectations, you’re going to get really, really cheesed off with me.

And that’s where a whole bunch of people are with Jesus right now. “Well I tried to follow Jesus but…” But what? “But He didn’t deliver what I expected, it was hard, I still had to suffer, I felt abandoned by Him.” We all go through that.

I’ve been walking with the Lord now for almost two decades, a good proportion of that has been studying and preaching and teaching God’s Word, if anyone should be over that sense of disappointment because of what I get to do every day, being in God’s Word, it should be me right? And yet when I have to walk through trials and some of them have gone for a long time, years, the thing my natural me always wants to do is act up and to struggle with the fact that I’m going through some trial or other.

Why can’t everything just fall into place? Why can’t things be easier than what they are? So this series of messages that we’re kicking off today, whilst it’s called “God’s Abundant Blessing” and it’s all about God’s abundant blessing, it’s going to strike at the very heart of this mismatch of expectations. And we’re going to do that by unpacking exactly what it is that Jesus has to say about God’s blessings.

So have a listen, this is the well known Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12 and it’s all about the blessing that God has for us, the kind of blessing we may not expect:

When Jesus saw the crowds he went up the mountain and after he sat down with his disciples when they came to him. Then he began to speak and he taught them this saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice, be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophet’s who went before you.

Now forget that perhaps you may have heard that many times. Familiarity in this case is a dangerous thing because we just end up skimming over the top of things and let’s just say that’s the first time you’ve heard it, take it at face value, you are blessed if you’re poor in spirit, if you’re mourning a loss, if you’re meek, if you’re persecuted and all that stuff.

Does that sound anything like the world’s version of success to you? No me neither. Obviously Jesus has something totally different in mind and since He was talking to His disciples when He said this stuff, His closest followers, those who were prepared not just to listen to His sermons but to model their lives on Him under His mentorship then my hunch is that this is something you and I need to get our minds around, what Jesus means about blessing because His blessing is different.

It’s amazing! It’s not what we expected. His blessing is amazing because it’s for real. He doesn’t sugar coat things; He doesn’t give us the little white wash and say it will all be a bed of roses. He said, sometimes you’re going to be persecuted, sometimes you’re going to feel poor in spirit, sometimes you’re going to have to get in there and do peace in the middle of a battle.

Jesus is real and He wants to bless us in the middle of the real situations of our lives.

Sometimes life is cruddy. We feel as though we should be blessed by God, but to be honest, life’s just not like that. And so, we end up asking some questions – like “Where is God?” and “Does He really love me?” Then why try the whole arrogance and self–sufficiency thing – but it turns out that that’s pretty empty and hollow too. So if God is a God that blesses us – and He is – what sort of a blessing does He have in mind? Hmm?

Great to be with you again today because we’re chatting about probably one of the most important and yet one of the most singularly, most misunderstood things God talks about. It’s the subject of blessing, God’s blessing. Here’s how it goes, we kind of sign up to following Jesus in our lives, great, I know lots of people listening today who have done that or perhaps you’re one of those people who’s kind of wondering whether you want to have a relationship with Him, wherever you are in your walk here’s how it goes.

We start following Jesus and you hear Him promise you blessing. We read about the blessings of God for His people all the time in the Bible. So we start expecting to be successful in this or that and before we know it God’s promise of blessing is falling well short of our ideas of success and so many people get all disillusioned with God, God where is the blessing? How come things aren’t easier than what they are? How come you just don’t wave your hand and splash around a few miracles and fix this and deal with that and sort that person out over there?

And so this tension develops because of a mismatch of expectations. Problem is we often don’t realise that’s what’s going on or maybe we don’t admit it to ourselves and it ruins our lives, it ruins our walk. I just know that there are a lot of people nodding their heads right now, you relate to this, of course you do, it’s one of the most common maladies afflicting followers of Jesus and it starts right with who we are.

What I love about Jesus is that He doesn’t pussy foot around; He doesn’t kind of shy away from telling us the truth about things in our lives that other people wouldn’t dare tell us. Sometimes we need to be told just the way things are. When you or I have something really important that’s wrong then a real friend is someone who fronts up and tells us so.

It’s exactly what Jesus is telling His disciples in that much famed Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 and interesting the chapter before is the record of Jesus calling His closest twelve disciples out of the thousands of people, the huge crowds that were following Him. And right off the back of that comes this Sermon on the Mount.

Now it’s kind of hard to see exactly who that sermon was for, was it for all the people who were up there on the mount, who’d gathered on that hillside to hear Him speak or was it just for His closest disciples? Have a listen to how Matthew kicks off his account of this event, Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12:

When Jesus saw the crowds he went up the mountain and after he sat down his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak and he taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.

It’s not quite clear is it? But what is clear is that this dissertation, this Sermon on the Mount is meant for disciples whether they were that inner group of twelve or some larger, wider group. A disciple literally is a learner so it’s for the people who want to follow Jesus, to learn from Him, to model their lives on His life and the very first thing Jesus has to say about blessing, what was it again?

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Now that right there brings the old ego down with a thud, it’s a great place to start because it talks about how we see ourselves. What Jesus seems to be saying here is that His blessing isn’t for all those people who are full of themselves, the people who think they’re really someone but for those who are real about who they are without Him.

Now we could easily make the mistake of thinking here, “well that’s it, that confirms it, this Christianity thing is just a crutch for losers, you have to be poor in spirit, you have to somehow be into self deprecation. See religion is all about treading on people and manipulating them and making them feel small.”

But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here because that’s not what He was into, in fact the religious leaders of the day were into that sort of religion and Jesus tore into them for that, He tore shreds off them.

So what does He actually mean by “poor in spirit”? What’s that all about? Who are the poor in spirit? John Wesley put it this way, he said:

Those who are unfeignedly penitent, they are truly convinced of their sin. Those who see and feel the state that they are in by nature being deeply sensible of their sinfulness, guiltiness and helplessness.

In other words those who are totally spiritually and morally bankrupt and who are prepared to admit it. The people who truly recognise that they’ve fallen short of the glory of God and they are totally, completely and utterly helpless to do anything about it, to save themselves from the consequences and they know it and they’re prepared to admit it.

I wonder if you’re one of those people. For a long time I wasn’t, for a long time I thought of myself as being something of a hot shot. Clever, capable, competent, self sufficient. God? Who needs God? And what Jesus is saying to His disciples, what He’s saying to you and me is that people with an attitude like that, those who are full of themselves won’t inherit the kingdom of God and as a result they won’t be blessed.

Every time I fall short of God’s glory, every time I let Him down, every time I sin in my life I’m so disappointed with myself. I just know that in and of myself I can’t make it right, I’d like to, I just can’t. I know the right things to do but I just can’t seem to do them some days. It seems to me to be one of those basic principles of life that whenever I try to do what’s good, whenever I really want to honour God sin kind of sneaks up behind me and it’s ready to pounce.

And so I for one keep short accounts with God and ask Him to forgive me, not because I’m a great bloke, not because I’m a great performer but because Jesus died for me and paid the price for my sin.

That’s what it means to be poor in spirit; it means to be real about who we really are and what’s going on in our hearts and our minds and our lives. Jesus put it another way when He was talking to a Church, Revelations chapter 3, verse 17, He said:

You say, ‘I am rich and I have prospered and I need nothing’ but you don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

The ones who are truly blessed are the ones who recognise who they truly are. The ones who are prepared to nail their wretched pride and false sense of self sufficiency and their success to the cross and go before God and ask Him for forgiveness. Not because they deserve it but because Jesus died to purchase that forgiveness for them.

So does that mean I’m a loser? Does that mean that somehow I’m less of a person than someone who’s got it all together? Am I? That’s what the critics would say, that’s what I used to say but what Jesus is saying to the critics here is that they’re delusional, they’re kidding themselves, they’re claiming something about themselves that simply isn’t true. You say I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I don’t need anything but you don’t realise that you’re wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked.

I cannot read that verse, I cannot hear those words from Jesus without thinking that was me, that totally, totally was me and yet Jesus came and touched my life and opened my eyes and showed me that I was one of those wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked people.

Friend if you’ve never taken the step of admitting the truth about yourself to yourself and to God today’s the day, the very day to do it and if you’re someone who’s admitted it and today again you find yourself falling short of God then today’s the day to go before God and admit again. Why? Because blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who recognise their total spiritual bankruptcy, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It’s the only way to get into the kingdom of heaven, it’s by trusting Jesus and there’s quite simply no greater blessing on the planet or off it than that.

You know, when we lose someone or something that we dearly love, a husband, a wife, a parent a child … perhaps even a job or a whole career, it’s natural that we should mourn that loss. In fact, the psychologists tell us that it’s incredibly important that we mourn the loss, for our longer term wellbeing. But in the middle of that time of mourning, it doesn’t feel as though God wants to bless us. But let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.

I want to chat with you today about something really important, it’s about mourning. No not that time when the sun pops up over the horizon each day, that’s not the sort of morning I’m talking about. It’s the sort of mourning that we do when we lose a loved one, when we get retrenched, when there’s a fire or flood that destroys our house or whatever loss or hurt would cause us to mourn.

Because when we’re mourning a loss, when we’re grieving it’s at that time in our lives maybe more than any other time that we experience a sense of disappointment with God’s promises of blessing and that’s what we’re looking at this week and in fact over the next couple of weeks on the program, this reality that you and I so often equate God’s promise of blessing with the worlds notion of success.

If God’s blessing me then obviously I have plenty of money, plenty of food, nice place to live, good health, great relationships, a satisfying but not too challenging job. If God’s blessing me then those are the things that I have but if one of those things isn’t quite right, if one of those expectations isn’t quite being met then obviously God isn’t blessing me. God, why not? What’s the matter with you God?

That’s how our thinking often goes, maybe not quite as vocally as that, maybe we wouldn’t quite put it in those words but when we’re mourning and grieving and going through the pain of loss so often it’s made doubly worse, like a double whammy, because at the same time it feels like God’s forsaken us. Have you ever been in that place?

We’re continuing our look today at God’s definition of blessing. Yesterday we saw how those who were truly poor in spirit were blessed because theirs was the kingdom of God but right now let’s look at the next blessing that Jesus talks about in His Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verse 4:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Now if ever something that Jesus said seemed crazy this would have to be it wouldn’t it? Think back to the last time that you mourned a loss, what was it? Was it a death, was it a breakdown of a relationship, was it unemployment, was it one of your children, what was it?

You know immediately what it was because you can remember the pain, you can remember the loss, you can remember that sense of hopelessness and feeling completely alone, you can remember how dark and cold and lonely a place that was even if perhaps you had some people around you to comfort you can’t you?

So can I ask you, right in the middle of your time of great loss, of mourning, of grieving, were you happy? Did you feel blessed? I didn’t think so and yet Jesus has the temerity to say:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Now let’s unpick that just quickly so we understand the full force of what He’s saying. Firstly that word “blessed”. There are a few Greek words used in the New Testament which are translated into the English word “blessed” and in many respects this is the strongest one, it’s the most direct one. It means literally “to be happy”. In fact some of the older Bible translations, you may have read it this way:

Happy are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

And please note with me that the word ‘happy’ is set in the present tense. So right in the middle of that time of loss, of grieving, of mourning, you will be happy, Jesus said, because you’re going to be comforted in the future.

Let me ask you something, can that be true? I mean really? Grieving is grieving, it’s a process, there are different stages of grieving that are well understood by psychologists and counsellors. It goes something like this: there’s denial then anger then bargaining then depression and then acceptance. That’s the traditional model, there are a few variations around that but pretty much anyone who’s ever been through grief and mourning will recognise those different stages, it’s really, really tough.

So is it really possible for us to stick happy right in the middle of that? I’ve had one major episode of loss in my life, there have been other smaller ones along the way but one really significant one and it was in the middle of that dark period in my life that I first met Jesus and I can attest to the fact that in the middle of the darkest days what Jesus says is true.

I’ll get to that, my personal experience in a minute but over the years I’ve spoken with many, many people who have been through times of mourning and grief, in fact as I read and answer many of the emails we receive here at Christianityworks in response to these radio programs one of the most common questions that I find myself responding to is this.

“How did what you say the other day relate to this particular loss or this particular grief in my life?” Now it’s not always quite those words but that’s so often what underlies the question and it’s my great privilege to be able to speak God’s love and God’s truth into those situations in people’s lives and most often the response I receive after that is a sense of revelation and comfort at the powerful way in which God’s Word ministers into their lives.

You know what really strikes me? Without God’s Word apart from knowing the truth we’re so completely, so utterly lost. We’re in this dark place and there seems no way out until the light of Jesus shines in that place and all of a sudden we can see, all of a sudden we can feel His warmth. For me it’s so often, in fact almost always begins with knowing the truth in the middle of the mourning, in the middle of the grief, in the middle of going through those struggles after a great loss.

My friend if you are mourning a loss right now please listen to the truth, you are blessed because Jesus means to comfort you, that’s the truth and He means to comfort you in a very real way.

I remember being in that dark place of mourning and grief, it went on for a long time, several months and it actually took a year or two to get through. It was awful. There were so many days where it felt like I was being torn apart and yes there were some well meaning friends around me who tried to comfort me and they were great, I mean I wouldn’t have made it through without them but somehow, I can’t quite put it into words, nothing they said made a difference at the end of the day.

It was like, it’s like the grief had put this impenetrable and invisible shield around me and they just couldn’t break through it. It’s the best way I can describe it but in the middle of that inky blackness, isolated from everyone else I decided to start reading my Bible. In that dark place I started to pray and I was totally bowled over because the very presence of God Himself was palpable.

He encouraged me, I discovered later that the word that Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit to His disciples when they were in fear for their lives literally means ‘encourager and comforter’. It’s kind of bizarre to look back on because the pain and the mourning went on, as I said, for quite some time but in the middle of that was God, very real, very present, to comfort me through and I came out of that time a totally different person, far from perfect let me hasten to add, but totally different.

Maybe you’ve heard me say this before but whilst I wouldn’t wish that much pain on my worst enemy I simply wouldn’t swap it for anything in this world.

The truth is pain is never easy, mourning and grief are never easy and we wouldn’t wish them upon themselves or anyone else but they’re not meant to be easy. Whatever the cause if we’ll just get still before God we’ll discover the greatest blessing of all, God Himself to console us in our grief, to comfort us, to heal us as only He can.

With all my heart I know this to be true, that:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

May you be so blessed one day when you are mourning.

Meekness is not a quality that you hear many people talking about. It’s not a quality that we hold up as one of those things that we admire in other people. In fact, these days, pretty much, we think that meekness is the same as weakness. And yet, Jesus said, “blessed are the meek”. Yeah, really? Why would He say that? Maybe just maybe, meekness isn’t what we think it is? Let’s take a look and find out.

Some would say I’m a bit of a tough old nutter, I’ve never really been afraid of a stoush. It’s not that I go looking for a fight but when push comes to shove I’m prepared to stand up and fight battles with people when I think they’re worth fighting and sometimes they are. Now that may sound a little bit odd coming from a guy whose full time job is telling people about the love of Jesus.

Well to tell you the truth I’m a somewhat mellower person of what I used to be before I met Jesus, hopefully. There’s a reason for that, we’ll come to that later, but for much of my life I’d plough straight over the top of people or through them or both to get to where I was going. So if you were in my road, watch out!

My reasoning on it, I guess, was it is a dog eat dog world and you had to do what you had to do to get to where you wanted to go. Plenty of people who live their lives that way so imagine my disdain and surprise then, back in those days before I knew Jesus personally, when I heard this little quote from something Jesus once said, what I now know to be the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verse 5:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Well that only confirmed it for me, religion, which is what I called it back then, is just a crutch for the weak and the down trodden and it’s not for me. Blessed are the meek, oh give me a break.

I love that saying, I love the saying, “no mans a total loss, he can always be used as a bad example” because it so well fits with who I was and what I did. The change for me came when Jesus came into my life and it was profound. Other people I know, many other people, were blessed always to have known Jesus all their lives. Christian parents, grew up in a Christian home, they can’t remember a time when they didn’t believe in Jesus and that’s fantastic.

But it was totally different for me, it was a dramatic encounter with Jesus on my road to success. The Lord did much to get my attention and a huge part of that was to humble me. I had an ego the size of a small planet and before God could do anything with me He desperately needed to bring me down off the pedestal that I’d put myself on.

I mean we all do that to some degree but with me it was a disease. There’s a big difference between a sober assessment of ourselves, I’m good at this, I’m good at that but I’m not so good at this thing over here, versus being totally full of yourself. Well I was full of myself and when you’re full of yourself it makes a huge amount of sense just to roll over the top of people.

I’m telling you this stuff because it sets the scene for the struggle I had coming to grips with this rather bizarre blessing that Jesus is talking about here. Let’s just have another look:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Can you see how a guy like me, I guess with my make up and background, would struggle with that? But there’s another bunch of people who would also struggle with it. The poor, the marginalised, the persecuted, the people who by their very nature are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to personality types.

You see those people who perhaps feel like others are always walking over the top of them, treating them like a door mat, they struggle with this too and if any of those describe you then of course you’re going to be struggling when Jesus said:

Blessed are the meek.

And for the same reason that I struggled with it because, well that great character from the long running TV series MASH, Father Mulcahy, put it really nicely when he said, “The meek may inherit the earth but it’s the grumpy who get promoted.”

That’s one way of saying it. The reality is we don’t expect the meek to get anything because meek people get walked over. It’s the powerful, the strong, the rich, the grumpy, those with privilege and position who end up owning everything, the weak get nothing.

There was an interesting article in my local paper, the Australian newspaper recently talking about one of the greatest risks of the world economy, in fact to world peace in the coming decade. One of the two top risks identified by the World Economic Forum was severe income disparity between developed nations and the developing nations. In other words the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.

Yeah I know, there’s nothing new in that but Africa, look at Africa. Africa’s one of the richest continents on the planet when it comes to natural resources and yet it’s home to countless millions of poor, of oppressed, threatened people, refugee’s. So how can it possibly be, come on tell me this, how can it possibly be that the meek will inherit the earth?

I guess the first thing in trying to come to an understanding in what Jesus was really saying here is that meek doesn’t equal weak. The original Greek word used here in the Bible literally means “mildness of disposition and gentleness of spirit”.

The most powerful explanation of this came to me in a sermon from the pastor of my first Church, I attended this Church, a little Baptist Church in Oyster Bay in Sydney just after I gave my life to Jesus and my pastor there was a great teacher, Pastor Phil. He told us that meekness is actually strength under control. Let me say that again because it’s powerful. Meekness is strength under control.

See meekness has nothing to say about how much power and influence we have or don’t have but it has everything to say about what we do with the power that we do have. The most powerful person whoever walked the planet was who? Well obviously it was Jesus, the Son of God. I mean go read about Him, He wielded the most amazing power, He wielded the power of life and death, He said to Lazarus, “come out of the tomb”, Lazarus was raised up and he came to life again.

Jesus, the Son of God, miracle man, could do anything, here He was in our midst but how did He use His power? What did He do with the power that God bestowed upon Him? John chapter 10, verse 17. He said:

For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it away from me; I’m laying down my life of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again and I’ve received this command from my Father.

Jesus took His power and He chose to use His power not for Himself but for you and for me and He chose to use His power to lay down His life to die that horrible death and to be raised again. And where Jesus saw injustice, where He saw religious hypocrisy, where He saw oppression He was like a lion, He tore it apart and yet this same Jesus used his power not to create an organisation or to gain power in the political system, He used His power to die for you and me.

That’s why He said in Matthew chapter 11 beginning at verse 28, He said:

Come to me if you are weary and carrying a heavy burden because I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls because my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Jesus was powerful and meek, the lion and the lamb. The meek are those who use what power they have not for their own benefit but for the benefit of others. The meek are those who humble themselves under the mighty hand of God and do His will. Sometimes they wield great power, other times they sit silent and suffer loss and abuse.

The meek are those who with all their heart want to see God’s will done and not theirs. They’re those to whom their own comfort, their own success, their own agenda, their own reputation, their own well being are all placed not up next to God, not above God but way, way down below God.

God always opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble and to the meek which is why Jesus truly could say:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

My friend meekness is a beautiful quality in people, power under control is a beautiful quality in people, some of the most powerful people I know in this world, a General in the army, heads of large corporations, they’re powerful and yet they have a humility and a meekness about them. See God has such a different perspective about power and meekness for you and me.

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

I don’t think that there’s a one of us who likes injustice, or evil, or bad behaviour in other people. Am I right? And yet, when it comes to injustice or evil or bad behaviour in us, well, then we tend to cut ourselves a bit more slack than we would if we’d found those things in others.

There have been plenty of times over the course of my fifty something years that I’ve come to the conclusion that life is just not fair. Maybe you have too. One time for some reason particularly sticks in my mind was when I was about ten years old.

We had a soccer game one afternoon, it wasn’t a competition, just an afternoon at school, our teacher took us down to the local park, set up a few goal posts, split the class into two teams to give us a bit of exercise and a bit of fun and get out of the school room. The teacher’s name, I remember this, was Mr Moore. The reason I remember him is he was my favourite teacher and naturally he refereed the game.

So we’re playing happily enough until he blows the whistle and makes a decision which falls against my team, can I tell you something? To this day I absolutely know he was wrong. I was so angry. I threw a fit, man I let him have it. I’m ten years old right? Short, dumpy, having a go. He stuck to his guns, he was firm and he said if I didn’t want to accept the decision I could sit out the game. That’s exactly what I chose to do.

You know I remember it as though it was yesterday and still now as I talk about it I can feel that sense of anger and indignation rising up in me. He was just wrong. Hopefully I’ve grown up a bit since then … hopefully. But isn’t it funny how that strong sense of right and wrong stays with us. Not always perhaps but certainly when the wrong end of the stick affects us, when the decision goes against us.

See, sometimes life just isn’t fair and when we’re on the receiving end of that unfairness we so want the right decision, the fair decision to be made. But what about when the shoe’s on the other foot? What about when we’re the ones dishing out the right and wrong to others? You know it’s funny, it seems that then we’re prepared to apply a different set of rules of right and wrong aren’t we? We’re prepared to give ourselves a bit more latitude in making the right or wrong choices.

We’re often prepared to accept a greater middle ground, more shades of grey between right and wrong instead of the black and white attitude we have when we’re on the receiving end of a wrong decision.

One of my former business partners, a qualified psychologist referred to it as ‘situational ethics’. Our ethics, our definition of right and wrong change depending on the circumstances and who’s on the giving end and who’s on the receiving end.

We’re chatting today again about God’s blessing, what it really means to be blessed by God. As I said earlier this week one of the toughest things for us is to accept this apparent disconnect between our ideas of success and God’s idea of blessing. We want to imagine that success according to our definition is exactly the same thing as blessing according to God’s definition.

And when that simple yet powerful formula doesn’t play itself out in our lives, when we imagine that blessing equals good health, prosperity and we find ourselves battling an illness or struggling with our finances then there’s a double whammy there because not only do we have to deal with that stuff that we’re dealing with but we end up battling our disappointment and our disillusionment with God.

It’s why we’re talking about this stuff this week so that we really understand what God means by blessing because when we understand that then we get to enter into His blessing on His terms no matter what our circumstances are, up, down, good, bad. God’s blessing doesn’t depend on our circumstances.

See my childhood tantrum on that soccer park is kind of a great little parable of our childish understanding of God’s idea of blessing. See there was Mr Moore, he was one of my favourite teachers and in my childish mind I’m kind of expecting that so that he lives up to who he is in my life, so he demonstrates that he is in fact worthy of being my favourite teacher when I point out the error of his umpiring ways as I saw them what he should actually do is automatically bless me by capitulating and agreeing with me.

Can you see how childish that is? And yet so often our expectations of God’s blessing are exactly the same as little short dumpy Berni back on that park with Mr Moore, his teacher. We want to throw a tantrum when right and wrong, good and bad, as we see them, don’t fall our way. I missed out on the fun of the rest of the afternoon through my tantrum.

And you know what, I know many a Christ follower who’s missing out, at least in part, on the fun and the vibrancy and the blessing of life through the same immature decisions in their relationship with God. How can we be blessed? I mean really. Here’s one way, Matthew chapter 5, verse 6:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.

Now righteousness is kind of a funny word, we don’t use it in common conversation today. In part it means what we’ve been talking about, right and wrong, that sense of justice, that’s part of it but not all of it. In part it means integrity and virtue, purity of life but that’s still not all of it. The other great part of what this word means as it’s used here by Jesus is about who we are and whether we’re in a condition acceptable to God. It means having a right standing with God.

A bit like someone accused of a crime. When they’re convicted they’re now on the wrong side of the law. Once they’ve served their sentence they’re back on the right side of the law. That’s what righteousness means and will you notice with me here please that when Jesus talks about righteousness He makes no distinction as to the situation?

He doesn’t specify whether I’m the kid on the soccer park having to swallow a tough decision or whether I’m the umpire dishing out that decision. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who literally want it so much they’re prepared to suffer for it, that’s the sense of those words to hunger and to thirst here, those who are suffering for and longing for righteousness right now are going to be blessed right now in the present tense because they will be filled, they will be satisfied.

Those who hunger and thirst for justice to be done, those who hunger and thirst for right standing with God, whatever that will cost them, those who hunger and thirst not only to be righteous through their faith in Jesus, not only to have a right standing before God because they believe in Jesus but actually to live that out, to do righteousness, to live out righteousness, to sacrifice their lives to be like Jesus as much as they’ll have to suffer along the way to do that, they are blessed because they will be filled, they’re longing will be satisfied.

So the next time we’re grumbling and complaining about injustice and I know there are some people listening right now here today who are suffering terrible injustice in their lives, the next time we feel as though somehow God’s deserted us we can by faith lay hold of this blessing because by faith we know that we will be filled. See faith is the assurance of things that we’re hoping for and the absolute strong conviction of the things we can’t see.

You see how disappointment and disillusionment are by products of a lack of faith in the promises of God? Do you see how childish and narrow we become when we’re on the receiving end of injustice or when we’re dishing out something that really we shouldn’t be?

Over and over again in the New Testament we read about rejoicing in our suffering, “consider it nothing but pure joy when you suffer”, writes James in his letter. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice”, writes the Apostle Paul to his friends in Philippi from his cell on death row.

When you and I suffer injustice and unrighteousness, whether it comes from someone else or from ourselves, it hurts. We can throw a tantrum, we can miss out on the rest of the game or we can go to God and thank him for the incredible blessing that we have right now in faith knowledge, in the absolute certain assurance, the conviction of that which we know is coming which we can’t see, we can go to Him and say thank you Jesus because:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.