This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome to day two of week four of our look through the book of Matthew. We're looking at Jesus' attitudes for life and his life management seminar and the Sermon on the Mount. And today we're going to focus on one attitude because this one verse, this one attitude may be the most misunderstood in our culture. In verse five Jesus taught us, here's the attitude I want you to have, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. " So Jesus said, "I don't want you to just be poor, I don't want you to just be mournful, be sad, I also want you to be meek. " Well that one, that one's hard for us to understand. This word meek is also sometimes translated gentle, but that doesn't help. This is one of the parts of the Bible that many people have a hard time with. Because when we see these words, meek equals weak, it equals geek. When we look at this word gentle, we think of a wimp, we think of somebody who has no strength. And I'll admit, I've got a tough job convincing you that it's a good thing to be meek. I realized how tough it is when I looked up the definitions of meek and gentle in the dictionary. Here's the definition of gentleness in the dictionary, intentional mildness, carefulness, Well that's helpful, but do you think that's what Jesus is saying here? Blessed are the tame, blessed are the cautious, blessed are the intentionally mild. Jesus called himself meek, but he calmed the storms with a word. He cleansed the temple with a whip. He called the Pharisees snakes. He constantly challenged his disciples. Obviously meek doesn't mean what we think it means, this play nice kind of word. Gentle doesn't mean just being quiet, it doesn't mean swallowing your anger. What does it mean to be meek, to be gentle? Well this Bible word, the idea behind it is power under control. It's power under control. A picture of gentleness, of meekness might be the Hoover Dam, where you have all this water that's being controlled by that dam so it can create this incredible amount of power that can light up cities. Or it might be a rocket taking off, it's not an explosion, you've got all the power of that explosion going through a funnel so that it propels the rocket into space. It's power under control. Why do we need meekness in our lives? Because we have power in our lives. God's given power into your life. You have power in your words to hurt or to help. You have power in your relationships to build or to destroy. You have power in your sexuality, in your habits, in your drive to succeed. And out of control, the power in those things will destroy you. Under control, under God's control, you inherit the earth. Inherit the earth. Gentleness, meekness, that's what lasts. In the end it is unconquerable because it's God's power. There's really three ways when you think about this to live your life. You can live the out of control life, the in control life, or the under God's control life. The out of control life, we all understand. That's the life that's marked by anger or is undisciplined. It's like an explosion. It's got destructive power. You never know what you're going to get. There's a lot of us, we would never live that out of control life. So we live the in control life. We're nice. We try to keep everything calm and organized, but we just have this feeling deep within, there's got to be more to life than this. Everything calm, everything nice. God made us to live under his control, under his control, a different kind of life, a different kind of power. Now, what does this mean? Well, where the rubber meets the road on this one is in our daily decisions. You want to have a new kind of power in your daily life. When we talk about the inherit the earth kind of power, what are we talking about? Let me give you some exercises based on what the scripture has to teach us about what it means to have meekness in our lives. Let me give you three real power exercises for this week. Exercise number one, when you're confronted, choose to love. You want to see if you're able to be gentle. Watch what happens when someone throws confrontational words your way, when somebody pushes your buttons and you feel the heat begin to rise in the back of your neck. You're having a quiet evening at home, but then all of a sudden somebody says something and you find yourself on the down escalator of communication. The Bible says in Proverbs 17, 14, starting a quarrel is like opening a flood gate. So stop before the argument gets out of control. So when you're confronted, you choose to love. How do you break the cycle? How do you stop it? Well, Proverbs 15 tells us a gentle answer turns away wrath. You have gentleness in that situation. You have power under control, under God's control. You don't say I'm going to just cop out of this situation and do what I want to do. You don't explode. No, you ask for God's control. When you're confronted, choose to love. Now if you're like me, it may take you a little while to get there. Your first response may not to be to choose to love, but that doesn't mean it has to be your last response. Whatever response is your first response doesn't have to be your last response. Go back, make the right choice, choose to love. When you're confronted, love. A second meekness exercise for this next week is when you're neglected, encourage. When you feel neglected, when you feel overlooked or ignored, what's the natural reaction? Well, it's usually one of two depending on your personality. Either you withdraw, you disconnect from the situation, nobody cares about me, I'm just okay, I'm out of here. Or you push, you push to be noticed. No one's going to ignore me, you say. So you put yourself right in the center of the circle. But real power is when you realize you're not the only one who feels neglected in life. And instead of pushing yourself forward or retreating yourself back, you look to other people and you look for someone else to encourage. One of the greatest things to do when you're discouraged is to look for somebody else to encourage. Because I'll tell you, if you're discouraged, there's a lot of other people around you that are discouraged right now too. They need encouragement. So you look for somebody to encourage. And I want to encourage you, look for someone that many people wouldn't take the time to encourage. We all love to encourage popular people or so-called powerful people. We think maybe we'll get on the coattails of their popularity or power by encouraging them. It builds us up to encourage them. How about encouraging an unnoticed person? Someone that nobody else would encourage. When you're neglected, you encourage. When you're confronted, you love. And then a third power, real power exercise is when you're rejected, forgive, forgive. Now we're going to talk about forgiveness a couple of times this week and we're going to hear it again and again in the Sermon on the Mount because it's one of the keys to living the life that God has for us to live. And I think most of us realize that unforgiveness hurts us much worse than the person we're holding a grudge against. We're getting eaten up inside and they probably don't even know about it. They've forgotten about it. But the question is, where do you find the strength to forgive? Where do you find that power? The Bible tells us again and again you find it by remembering what Jesus did for you, by focusing on his forgiveness of you. The only place that I have found the strength to forgive is by remembering that I've been forgiven, by remembering what he's done for me. So every time you feel bitterness, you remember Jesus on the cross dying for you. When you're rejected, forgive. Jesus modeled this on the cross. Remember when he was facing that ultimate rejection, being nailed to a cross. Remember what he said, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. " When do you think Jesus was the most gentle? You could look at a lot of different times in his life. It could be, and some people could say it's when he was holding a child. It could be when he was healing a leper. Or it could be when he was weeping over his people, weeping over Jerusalem. But I would say to you that Jesus was never more gentle than when he was on the cross. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Who do you need to forgive? Hearing this, remembering what Jesus did for you, how could God give you the strength to forgive? Let's take a few minutes to pray. Our Father, there is no one who is more gentle than you are. Even with your great power, you are so patient with us. You are so forgiving towards us. You love us even when we insult you by not trusting you. You love us to the extent of sending your Son to give his life for us. So Lord, help us to learn from you. Help us to live life under your control. We want to be like you. Our words, our thoughts, our actions under your control. Father, help us to be gentle with those that we love this week. And help us to be gentle with those we don't love. We don't really know if we love them yet, but we can still be gentle, we can still be kind. Lord, I can't do this. You might just say this to Jesus, "I can't do this on my own strength. " So I ask for your strength. Strengthen me to love when I'm confronted, to encourage when I'm neglected, to forgive when I'm rejected. Strengthen me, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Life-changing bee attitudes.