Sermon Matthew 5:1-6 “Joy in Surrendering to God”
Pittsgrove Presbyterian Church
January 12, 2020
I am continuing my series of sermons on Jesus’ teachings called the Sermon on the Mount. This month we are looking at what Jesus says about “happiness” in nine sayings that are commonly called the Beatitudes. Last week, we saw that those who are poor and those who mourn are happy because of their dependence on God. This week we will see how obedience to God also leads to happiness.
Will you pray with me? Lord Jesus, we thank you for teaching us how to be happy. We know that you are with us as we grieve. We know that you are with us in our need. And we find our greatest happiness when we follow you. We pray this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Matthew 5:1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
I have asked many non-Christians why they do not attend church. They usually say that church is for a bunch of weaklings who have no strength in themselves so they go to church hoping to find a god who will protect them. They often point to verse 5 where Jesus seems to confirm their idea of us by saying that the meek are happy and will inherit the earth.
The word “meek” brings to our minds the idea of weakness. We think of a mousy “Caspar Milquetoast” type of person. Caspar Milquetoast was a comic strip character in the 30s and 40s featured in a strip called “The Timid Soul”. The word milquetoast was a misspelling of the words “milk” and “toast”, and has come into our language as meaning someone who is weak and ineffectual. Related terms are “doormat”, someone who gets walked over, and “wet noodle”. So in a country that idolizes football players and is built on rugged individualism this is a real hard sell for the church. Why would anyone want to come to a church where meekness is considered a virtue?
When Jesus spoke these words from the mountaintop he was quoting Psalm 37.
Psalm 37:10 Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there.
11 But the meek shall inherit the land,
and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
Jesus did not use the English word “meek”. Rather he used the Hebrew word “anaw”. We are told in scripture that Moses had more of this “anaw” than anyone else, and no one would ever compare Moses to Caspar Milquetoast. Moses was the great prophet who freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them for 40 years in the wilderness. Does Moses sound weak and ineffectual to you? And Proverbs says that the opposite of “anaw” is not strength but pride. “Anaw” therefore does not refer to weakness but to humbleness.
I spent my years in seminary thinking about what kind of church I would serve. I came from a big church in Washington DC and always expected to go to a large evangelical church where I could be the Associate Pastor for Christian Education or something like that. I prayed over and over that God would give me what I wanted. So it surprised me when I began to sense that God was calling me to pastor smaller churches. But the one thing I learned as a Christian was that I had to follow God wherever God might lead. So I gently and submissively followed God to whatever ministry He wanted. By following God and adapting myself to God’s purposes, I have found real joy and happiness. I am confident that God is doing something very special with this church and I am very happy that God is using me to make that happen.
Moses too learned the value of submitting to God. He was established as a shepherd tending his father-in-law’s sheep. Moses had no intention of leading the Israelites anywhere. So when God revealed to Moses His plan, well Moses was more than a little skeptical. But Moses ate his pride and humbled himself before God accommodating his will to God’s will. And by this Moses found his calling and true source of happiness.
Jesus called himself “anaw”. Listen to his words from later in Matthew.
Matthew 11: 28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle (anaw) and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus gently and submissively allowed the Father to conform his will to God’s will. And through this Jesus found his happiness.
God has given us His law for our lives. We have a choice. We can ignore God’s laws and be filled with pride and arrogance, follow our own way, make our own choices, and forget about God. Or we can accept God’s law as the law of our lives and mold our wills around God’s will. “Anaw” means that we allow the Holy Spirit to shape us into the creatures we were created to be. We become adaptable to God’s plan for our lives. We surrender to God. A better translation for Jesus’ words would be: “Happy are the adaptable for they will inherit the earth.”
As soon as we gently and submissively allow God to adapt us for His purposes we find that we hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Righteousness” is another one of those words that we use often in church but rarely in ordinary conversation. It originally meant having the right weight or measure. When someone wanted to buy an ephod of flour or a shekel of bronze “righteousness” ensured a fair transaction. It came to be known as telling the truth about someone or going down the right path. “Righteousness” always deals with a right relationship and never refers to just one person. The primary relationship that “righteousness” refers to is our relationship with God. We are to love God, live in God’s grace and abide by God’s discipline.
We might expect that Jesus would tell us that those who are righteous, are in right relationships, are happy. But that is not what he said. Jesus said that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are happy. Here in America, it is difficult to grasp hunger and thirst. When we say we are hungry we often mean that we want a candy bar to get us through until dinner. We say we are thirsty when we want another can of Coke. We have no real idea of what hunger and thirst mean to a person near death by starvation. We can’t imagine having a desire that our lives depend on. But I suspect that many of us do hunger and thirst but we are not really sure what we hunger and thirst for. We realize that we need something and that it is more than what we can grasp for ourselves.
What we really hunger for is the righteousness of God. We need a relationship with God to satisfy our deepest needs and desires. Our joy, our deepest happiness comes from the realization that a relationship with God will satisfy our deepest hunger and thirst. As we experience the joy of being in a relationship with God we experience the need to love God more fully. This attracts us to studying the Bible and hearing the preaching of God’s word in church. We also respond by loving our neighbors more. We try to avoid those things which come between us and our friends and family that eat away at our relationships.
A good example of someone who hungers and thirsts for righteousness can be seen in the movie, Atonement. In this movie, a young writer named Briony Tallis does a very bad thing which destroys the relationship she had with her sister. She is forced to deal with what she has done by always desiring but never finding forgiveness and reconciliation. Briony spends her whole life hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Sadly, she never comes to the realization that what she really hungers and thirsts for is a relationship with God.
The late Lloyd Ogilvie, the former pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian Church was working on this verse when he experienced a dream. In this dream, he was speaking to thousands of people when God came up and stood next to him. Lloyd asked God what was the greatest need of these people and what should he give them. Was it salvation and eternal life he asked? God said no, that was already accomplished. So Lloyd responded, maybe forgiveness, eternal happiness, your presence, and power? God told him that he was on the right track. So Lloyd pleaded with God to tell him what these people really needed. And God said “I want my people to want Me! I long for my people to long for Me as much as I long for them.”
The reason we hunger and thirst for righteousness is because God loves us and gives us the desire to love Him. We want a relationship with God because God wants a relationship with us and has placed the intense desire for that relationship in our hearts. So if you desire to love God, congratulations, because God already loves you.
When Jesus said these words he knew something about hunger and thirst. He had just completed his time of temptation in the wilderness where he was sustained not by bread but by the Word of God. The prophet Amos put it this way,
Amos 8:11 “The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.
The hunger and thirst that Jesus is talking about can only be filled by hearing the word of God. We have an intense spiritual hunger and thirst that can only be filled by reading scripture and hearing the proclamation of God’s Holy Word in church. God wants us to experience His love for ourselves and has given us the scripture to satisfy our hunger and thirst and bring us into a closer relationship with Him. We find in scripture that God loves us.
This frees us to love one another, the second aspect of righteousness. The needs of people become our passion in life. We are bothered by broken relationships and desire healing. God leads us into situations of human need and calls us to respond.
So we see today that happiness comes from accommodating ourselves to God’s will and entering into a relationship with God based on God’s desire for us to love God just as God loves us. We respond to this gift of happiness by loving our neighbor as ourselves and we find that our hunger and thirst for God are filled by God’s Holy Word.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, thank you for loving us and wanting to be in relationship with us. We pledge to accommodate ourselves to your will and will follow you wherever you lead us. We strongly desire to have a closer relationship with you and promise to feast on your spiritual food nurtured by your Holy Word, Amen.
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