BLESSED ARE THE YIELDING
Matt. 5:3-12

A. Last Sunday evening we discussed the Beatitudes from the standpoint of “Blessed are the Empty.” We
saw that the Sermon on the Mount is the best known of all the teachings of Jesus and also the least
understood and the least practiced. The Beatitudes are a composite description of what every
Christian ought to be. They condemn conventional human wisdom and attitudes and illustrate the
radical difference between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of men. We saw that the
kingdom is not open to the self?righteous and self?assured. It has no place for those who obtain their
desires by wealth, strength, might, trickery and violence. Instead it is reserved exclusively for the
humble, penitent sinner who comes seeking God out of a sense of his own emptiness. The kingdom
of heaven belongs not to the full, but to the empty and to the “yielding.” And in this lesson, we will
consider the Beatitudes that deal with the virtue of being “yielding.”
1. Matt. 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” The world despises what it considers “meekness. The world’s beatitude vows that “Cursed are the meek, for they will be taken advantage of and run over!” But true meekness is not a natural disposition, it is a steely moral resolve at a time when one may have the power, and the inclination, to behave otherwise.
a. It is not weakness ? e.g. the Lord Matt. 11:29; 26:53. Meekness may have immense power, but it
keeps it under the control of great principles. A tamed wild animal. A man tamed to the yoke of
Christ that guides and controls him through life. It is not an indifference to evil ? e.g. Moses in
Exo. 32:19; Num. 12:3.
(A) Meekness is often found in the company of other great qualities: lowliness, kindness,
longsuffering, forbearance, gentleness. Truly wretched are those who are selfish and
uncontrolled in their strength and who use force to demand their rights, because their
success will be short?lived. Blessed are those who gently exercise a restrained power.
(1) Matt. 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” God does not want an
occasional compassion. A consistent mercy that is a controlled and settled disposition of
heart and character. True mercy comes from our acute awareness of our own need for
God’s mercy, and our gratitude for it, Matt. 18:21?35; Tit. 3:1?3. Mercy is the driving
force in our efforts to reach the world with the gospel. Christians who are not deeply
concerned about lost souls are not driven by mercy and compassion for the fate of the
spiritually lost. They do not share the nature of Jesus. Wretched are those who exact full
justice from others without compassion, for they will bear the full penalty of their own sins.
But blessed are those who are humble enough to show mercy.
(2) Matt. 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” The sons of God are not merely peacemakers in the ordinary sense of mediating human disputes. They are the ones who seek to bring men the peace of Christ by bringing men to Christ, Jno. 14:27; Jas. 3:17.
(B) Any peace not grounded in reconciliation with God is no real peace at all, Eph. 2:13?17; Rom. 5:1; 12:18. Wretched are those who promote the strife caused by sin, because they show who their real father is. But blessed are those who are instruments of the peace that comes from truth.
(1) Matt. 5:10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” One would think the world would welcome such people as God’s. But instead, it stirs up the world to a bitter hatred — A hatred driven by prejudice.
They hate our love for righteousness because it is so drastically different. That difference
illuminates their love for evil. There is always the ever “ silent judgment of the Christian’s
contrasting innocence.” To be like Jesus will always bring the animosity of the world,
Jno. 15:18?20. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Wretched are those who save their necks rather than do right, because they will have no
part in the kingdom of the righteous. But blessed are those who will forfeit anything, even

their lives, for the privilege of serving the King.
(2) The world’s path to “blessedness” exalts autonomy, self-rule, independence, and self-sufficiency. The world shouts, “It is absurd to believe, in Jesus and His promise, “Blessed are those who mourn.” That’s because their value system is perverted and the judgment of what is good or bad is determined by a person’s value system. For the Christian, the things that make life good are the things that draw us closer to God and make us more like Him. Judged by this standard, the Beatitudes not only make sense, they are profoundly wise. As Malcolm Muggeridge once said, “We become forgetful that Jesus is the prophet of the losers’, not the victors’ campion. He is the one who proclaims that the first will be last, that the weak are the strong and the fools are the wise.” In His kingdom we reject our selfish, carnal, worldly, nature so we can live in His kingdom and “become partakers of the divine nature.” 2 Pet. 1:4.
(3) Acts 20:32.

Spur - 08/17/03 pm