Sermon on the Mount – Blessed are the Meek

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

We've started by going over the Beatitudes. I was going to lump them all together in one message, but when I tried to do "blessed is the poor in spirit," and then do all the rest in the next one—"blessed are those who mourn"—I took up a whole message. So today we're exploring "blessed are the meek." We spoke about what the word "blessing" means—makarios. Blessing—that's like worship. If you win the lottery, that's a blessing. If you have a family or some type of gift that can be attributed to the divine, to God, it's a blessing. But that's not really what that word means, the word used here in the Sermon on the Mount.

Historically throughout the Old Testament, this word is used to describe the lifestyle—not given by God, but the lifestyle of someone else that is unworthy. A positive lifestyle. It's a word you would use to describe how good someone else has it compared to everyone else. Makarios. Man, they sure are makarios. What the good life those people have. Just look at the good life. Man, Elon Musk, he has the good life because he gets to play with rockets every day, right? So and so has the good life because they have all this wealth or all this power or all this security. Makarios.

The Irony of the Good Life

Using that word makes the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount not quite as light and fluffy and positive. It fills them in a very Jewish way, in a very Jewish style of teaching. It fills them with irony that can be perceived as a little dark. Wow, the good life are those who are poor in spirit, who have been broken spiritually, for theirs is the kingdom of the sky. You know who has the good life? The good life—those who mourn, who have experienced or see how broken reality can be, and their tears continually fill up the rivers beside them. What the good life they have, because they're going to be comforted one day.

The good life are the meek. It makes you turn your head and think, what is Yeshua? Is this really encouragement? Is it really hope? Yeah, it's hope. But it's using irony and a type of twisted humor to drive that hope to a very deep place. This is the good life. How so? Because these are the people, these are the type of people that God is calling to be a part of his kingdom and to be in his kingdom. These are the type of people that are already right there at the doorstep. This is what the kingdom looks like. It's filled with these kind of people, because who else would have the greatest hope of all of ushering in the kingdom and reign of God? Blessed are the meek.

The Crying Indian Commercial

In 1970, a commercial came out on television. I remember seeing it in the late 80s, maybe even the early 90s. Apparently it had a long airtime. It featured a Native American in a beautiful outfit, canoeing down a peaceful stream. He got off at the bank, pulled his canoe up, and walked up the hill because there was some noise going on. When he reached the top, it was an interstate. A deep voice came across the commercial and said something like, "Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country." All of a sudden, a car passed by this Native American fellow, and a bag of trash flew out the window and hit his feet and scattered everywhere.

The commercial said, "And some don't." Then the historic scene is this man looking at the car drive away, trash everywhere, and he looks at the camera, and a tear just drops. Anyone remember this commercial? Man, I saw this when I was a kid and was ready to go protest. I mean, I was seven years old. Let's get it. Let's do something. This is—he's crying. I mean, he's crying. This poor old man. That commercial was amazing. It won awards. The commercial won awards for how impactful it was at spreading the message of being conscientious about litter. So it was a huge push during that time, if you remember.

Being a litterbug was like, you don't do that. And you felt a sense of righteousness when you sacrificially stopped in the parking lot and picked up a piece of trash and threw it, and hopefully you still do. But remember, it's a trend. It was like a trend during that time. It's an amazing commercial. It's called the Crying Indian commercial, and it had huge implications—get people to go pick up trash. That was the purpose of the commercial. It was produced by an organization called Make America Beautiful, and this organization had existed for quite a while. I believe they were the ones who coined the term "litterbug" a few decades before this.

And this organization, to raise awareness of littering and picking up trash and cleaning up, was started by beverage and bottling corporations because they were mass-producing litter—so many individual items, not in bulk, but individual items, and selling it at such a rapid rate that litter was becoming a big issue. When you look down and see all of the Coke bottles and Pepsi bottles all over the place, who's responsible for this? For mass producing this much trash? How do we fix this? Well, Pepsi, Coke, bottle companies—you guys are gonna have to figure this is a problem that's growing because of what you're producing and mass producing and sending out everywhere.

We don't want that. We don't want to take responsibility for this. So corporations got together and formed essentially a propaganda campaign to make it your problem. For good reason, right? I mean, if you have a piece of trash, then you should throw it away. Even if it's 100 times more trash increase than society's used to, you should do it. And so this was one of the agendas of this commercial that starred an Italian man playing a Native American. Always an agenda when corporations do something. And so now they don't have to take any responsibility. It's your responsibility, right? Pam. You guys remember around 2003?

Greenwashing and Carbon Footprints

Back in 2001, but around 2003, there became a big issue involving global warming. It had always been an issue, right? Back in the 50s, we started realizing that ozone—I mean, different things that we do may be affecting the ozone, and we have this thinning layer in Antarctica. Remember the hole in the ozone, that big deal back in the 80s and 90s, and then it just disappeared one day? What in the world? It's because we fixed it. It took a long time, but the campaign was finally taken away. That's historic. Then we have the global warming stuff that came out of nowhere and became very politicized. I don't know all the science.

I definitely have a keen eye for propaganda and don't really—whenever someone uses blatant propaganda, and this can be for food or politics or health or war, I turn off. I'm like, these people are obviously trying to exploit other people. That being said, I think that, yeah, what we do to the Earth may have bad consequences. If we do bad things to the Earth or bad things to the atmosphere, I don't think that's unreasonable at all. But remember it was around 2003 when all of a sudden this term really became popularized: carbon footprint. We started seeing a push for you to calculate your carbon footprint so that you can do something about your carbon footprint.

You guys remember this? Right? Big deal. Do you know who started that campaign? British Petroleum. BP. In 2003, they popularized that term. And you cannot find that term really on their website anymore. They've changed a lot of the language around. But here's what their website used to look like. I've got a screenshot here, and I want you to notice the emphasis. You could go to BP's website and calculate your carbon footprint. You can still do it today. It's fun, neat, I don't know. Offset your travel emissions. Know your carbon footprint. Make your event carbon neutral. You know where I'm going next, right?

Everyone does this. It's propaganda. Whenever someone needs to shift a point of view or mislead for their own benefit—for things having to do with the littering commercial and carbon footprint—this is called greenwashing.

It's a practice that corporations have done for a long time. It's when they start a campaign to market being green. We need to do things better for the earth. We need to pick up our trash. We need to eliminate carbon footprint. We need to do all these things. So that, A, it shifts the focus from them being the cause of them to you as the individual, and it also makes them look like they're kind of righteous. And then they go to our Congress, they go to our politicians. This is how our country works. It is what it is. And they bribe—I mean lobby—the politicians to pass laws that are against the thing that they're campaigning for because it will benefit them.

Greenwashing. It's common practice. This is what BP did along with all of the major big oil companies back in the 2000s and into the 90s. It's amazing. And you're left with the bill. Big oil accounts for $77 billion a year in health impacts to Americans alone. The oil industry contributes to over 8,000 deaths a year, contributes to 410,000 asthma attacks every year— respiratory disorders, stroke, cancer. The increase of nitrogen dioxide, which is caused by emissions from big oil, has a direct link to autism. Only 100 of these corporations make up 71% of all carbon emissions that go out. Just the top 100.

But you need to work on controlling your carbon footprint in your little SUV. It's not good gas mileage. No, cars probably aren't healthy for the atmosphere. But do you see the agenda? It's your responsibility to deal with the effects of what we're profiting off of. And when I say profit, I mean profit.

The Machinery of Modern Exploitation

Genius, isn't it? You've been had. Even if you didn't believe it, you were still had because no one was looking at them. Now, this would be one thing if it was just big oil, but this is how our economy works by design. This is how our government that we built works. Big oil, big pharma, big food. I sound like such a conspiracy theorist right now. I know, I know. Big food. Gosh, when food corporations can lobby the FDA—sorry, make campaign donations, right?—to the FDA so that they can get food approved that's not food, that causes real harm, and it's part of the standard operating procedures of how our country works, guys, it's a problem.

It's a problem, and to be blunt, no politicians on TV right now are saying anything about it, and there's a reason. No matter how awesome that candidate looks, there's a reason, because this is common knowledge. But it's your fault for eating that food and experiencing the health benefits, right? Such a scapegoat. Go to the store. This is all that's there anymore. Your fault. Or better, it's your fault for not buying the health supplements the same company or same corporation is selling so that you won't. You're responsible solely. Imperial greed kills in ways that we don't even recognize.

The Machinery of American Slavery

By the time the Atlantic slave trade was banned in the U.S. in 1808, not slavery, the slave trade stopped. Some 600,000 African slaves were imported into North America. But unlike the rest of Americas, you guys realize the Americas are a lot bigger than the U.S., right? There's more Americans than just in the U.S. We just like the name. Unlike the rest of Americas, where the millions of other slaves were traded and imported to, we leveraged forced breeding to increase profits. By the time the Civil War started, 52 years later, we then had a population of 4 million enslaved black people. Of those 4 million at the time of the Civil War, 80 in that moment or in that season, 80 were working the local plantation down the road here, Brattansville.

You guys ever been to Brattansville? You should go. It's really cool. It's really neat as far as history and all of this information is there. It's amazing. And they're doing really cool work there. But one of the men had escaped during the war. He had escaped Brattansville and he went and joined the Union Army. And when the war ended, his name was James William. And James William was finally free, finally free after the war ended. He never got his mule and 40 acres, but at least he was free. And so he moved back to his home in York right down the road to where he lived. He even shopped at the general store frequently at the plantation, which is kind of, really?

So the slave that escaped there was freed, kept coming back, and they have him on record as buying supplies, frequenting there to buy stuff. Okay, there we go. It is what it is. Done, I guess. I don't know. He's just trying to live his life.

Oppression After Emancipation

But see, there's a problem during this time of history that we don't talk about because oppression for the black community didn't stop when the war ended. In the South, we had a group of white people, white folks, who were very upset by this. And so they formed something called the Klan. And they did their best, under the guise of costumes, to harass and murder and push out the black community from the South. And because of all of these things going on, James William started a militia. He was in a militia, a black militia, to help protect the black communities from the Klan attacks. Because when the Klan was formed, the Ku Klux Klan, they would do everything in their power to affect the lives of the black population here.

So it would be uncomfortable. They would want to leave. Just get away. That's all they wanted. And they started doing nightly raids for months at a time. So essentially imagine a whole group of people rushing up as if it was a drive-by shooting and hitting a house hard, full of family, and shooting as many people as they can, lynching whoever they can and burning the house down and then running away. And every evening this was going on in York County for months.

On March 6th, a run was made to William's home when they found out where he was staying. And he was pulled out kicking and screaming, made to climb a tree with a noose on, and then someone climbed up there with him and pushed him off the branch. He caught himself with his hands, and so the man pulled out a knife and began to hack his fingers until he let go and was hung. This is the history of York County. And it's one that shouldn't be banned from books.

Slavery by Another Name

But it got better, though, because at least we had the 13th Amendment in the Constitution. Does anyone know that? It's the 13th Amendment. It's what bans slavery once and for all in our Constitution. I think I have a quote here. Let's read it. Let's see here. Yeah. All of this is a part in the middle. Right? So slavery has not been banned in America. You just can only be put to slavery if you're convicted of a crime. So naturally, what do we do as humans always grasping for power for our own benefit? Try to find the loophole. We don't know anything about that come tax season, right? So what do you think the southern states did when this was passed at the end of the war?

We're going to find a loophole. And all of a sudden, all of these black people started getting convicted of crimes. People would be convicted of crimes, then forced into involuntary labor, and they would profit, right? They would lease the prisoners to private corporations and companies to do the work so that they could make money, right? I think we have one image here of some of the leased group. It's the kids. I think it's the children, if we have it. I don't know if we have it or not. But they had a group. Yeah. One group that was circled around, and these are not adults. These are orphans or criminal children, quote, unquote.

But this was widespread. It finally got banned in 1941, I think, is when convict leasing got banned. But another phase loophole came out around that time, a little bit before that time, called chain gangs. Remember them? Yeah, chain gangs. So everyone would have their chains on, and they'd go walk around with a sledgehammer. Yeah, they'd go do work. And this was how this continued on. And we even have chain gangs still today. This is at Angola Prison in Louisiana. And these prisoners are paid four cents an hour. So it's not slavery if you're working for a wage, right? It makes you kind of wonder, what role do for-profit prisons play in our country?

Yeah, and when you understand prison, how the prison system works and why these things transpired, guys, there's a spider web. This prison thing is a cog in the wheel. And so, yeah, look into it.

A Child's Questions About Reservations

But a couple months ago, Ben went on a field trip to the Catawba Indian Cultural Center. Everybody still good? I feel like I may have started out a little bit too. We're good? Okay. Benjamin went on a field trip to the Catawba Indian Cultural Center, which is, of course, in the Catawba Reservation, right down the road here. Yeah, I want to talk about that history. This is the Cherokee Nation tribe of Native Americans here, the people of the river. And afterwards, one night when we were going to karate, I take him to karate, Ben asks, he says, Dad, so what is a reservation anyway? And I said, oh, well, buddy, and I just remember driving down the road, be a good dad, don't sugarcoat this, but don't mess him up. And so I told him what a Native American reservation was. And he asked more questions. And I finally ended up, and this isn't exactly what I said to him, but the same points. I may speak more plainly to you.

The Genocide of a People

But basically I told him about the arrival of Europeans to this land and how these Europeans thought gold and treasure were here, but there was a problem. And the problem was that there were tens of millions, estimated 60 million Native Americans, people already living here, already here and have been here. And so they started killing them to wipe them out so they could have what they had in their land. We walked onto the land that they were living on and we told them to get out. We took their homes for ourselves, their supplies, their fields, their cattle. We even took their kids. And when the settlers were not killing them by force, they were sending them blankets and gifts that were infected with diseases such as smallpox and attempting to wipe them out through the spread of disease.

The colonizers, the settlers, poisoned their water supply to kill them. They poisoned their food, tried to take everything. And when they had pushed enough of them west to, well, at least it was isolated to that part of the country, they said, "You know what? Let's take care of their food and supplies too. Let's kill the buffalo. Let's wipe out the buffalo." So they did. It's the main source for many of the tribes out there. The skin is used for all sorts of things. Cool. We can cripple them if we do this. So the settlers went out west, and we began killing the 30 million buffalo until there were 325 left.

Not 1,000. 325 buffalo left to wipe out these tribes. People that were in our way, that didn't matter, that were not important, but had something we want. That's what we're willing to do, and we can justify it. Fill in the blank. Of course, the buffalo ate the buffalo grass that covered and strengthened the soil all over the West, and so it overran everything, which became kind of a nuisance thing to do. And in World War I, there was a huge push from Europe to start planting wheat for profit.

How Land Became Power

And we got all this land out here, so they killed all of the buffalo grass and planted like wheat, which wasn't very strong for the dirt. And oh, behold, after a little while, guess what happened? It's something called a dust bowl that came through, and no one had any idea why it happened. And then once we had the land and once we had the power—because land is power, you guys realize that? If you're a land owner, you have a say. Used to be you were the only people that could vote when the country was first founded because that was a signet of power and significance and importance. So owning land is a big deal throughout history.

Once we had the land, at that point in our history, we didn't need to kill or wipe out the Native Americans. We just needed to immobilize them. So the federal government allotted a piece of their original land back to them. And within this land, you have your freedom, you have your liberties, you have certain regulations that protect you from us and so on and so forth. And then they were driven into poverty so they could never take power back. You've heard of the top 1%? The majority of the bottom 1% lives on Native American reservations in the U.S. Now, this is me explaining the history to my son in a way that I hope he could understand without filling his head with those kinds of images and stuff.

But my son was sad to hear this. Benjamin was sad. Some people might think, man, why would you tell your son these things? Because he's going to feel guilty. And you don't want him to feel guilty because he's not Native American. My son didn't feel guilty, and that's never a reason to censor history to your children.

Teaching Your Children the Truth

You have a responsibility if your children are going to be here and stand for the things that allegedly we want them to. They need to know the history one way or another. My son did not feel guilty for being white or not being Native American. Why would he? But now he has a level of empathy with a marginalized group of people that he met and engaged with who taught him amazing things about their culture. And the funny thing about kids is they understand. They have a clear understanding of what injustice looks like. And I'm proud of that. All of these stories, whether they deal with an individual person, a people group, or the greed of empire and how it harms and kills people—all of these stories, unfortunately, are not unique. The list could go on, right? The apartheid of South Africa. Could gracious God have mercy? What's going on in Congo? The world is blind to it because they don't have cell phones to record everything and upload to social media. How about the Dutch trading empire? Oh, gosh.

How about the French colonial occupation of Vietnam and Africa? The Romans were no different in their empire.

The Roman Empire and Its Class System

The Romans used violence and forced patronage to occupy land and people. That was their strategy. They had a class-tiered social system. And you guessed it, the wealthy and powerful landowners were where? At the top. Senators and Roman administrators—the ones who had the power—were at the top. But right below them were the nobles, the rest of the landowners, people of status. You had a couple more tiers, but in the very bottom, the biggest part of the pyramid—because pyramids always have a big, big, big lower level—you had people of slave status. They didn't have rights, didn't make a ton of money, didn't have much money.

They were the necessary inconvenience of society that we have to put up with because they're the fuel that makes everything go up the pyramid. And right above slave status were the freedmen, which really wasn't that big of a difference. You had citizenship, I suppose, or at least you were free on some basic level, but still, you're at the bottom. Over 30% of the Roman Empire was slave status. One in three. One in three. They were exploited. They had no power. They were punished if they didn't comply. This is the life of an empire.

Born Into Occupation

This was the scenario that Yeshua was born into. He was not born into the palace of a king. He was not taken and dropped off into the arms of the daughter of Pharaoh. He was born in a feeding trough in a common house in Bethlehem, a beautiful place. Bethlehem is so beautiful. I encourage anyone—if you ever have the opportunity—to go to Bethlehem. It's amazing. It's awesome. People there are awesome. The Christian community there is awesome. It's a really beautiful place. But a poor place, very poor place. For the same reasons it was poor 2,000 years ago, it's still poor today. He was born in a community that was afflicted by occupiers, by colonization of the Romans, by these foreign settlers, by greedy business owners. They were oppressed by violence. All taking place in their own land. In their own land. Can you imagine driving down 485 or 77 and a German police officer pulls you over and gives you a ticket? Can you imagine how vulnerable that would feel? This is what was going on. And this has been the case for 500 years.

Five Hundred Years of Oppression

Babylon took over all of Judea, destroyed many people, destroyed Jerusalem, the temple, and exiled the rest to Babylon. When they came back to their land, they were still under Persian control, still slaves to an empire. Then the Greeks came, and the Greeks oppressed the Judean community severely. We know the story of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. That's when the Hasmoneans rose up and used force and violence to push the Greeks out of their territory. Praise the Lord, great victory. We finally did it. The Hasmoneans instantly started to form a conquest of the northern land. They went up and pushed out and violently took back all of the land that once belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel because it was the most fertile.

They saw benefit in doing that. So then they could enact trade and start commerce for themselves. After occupying that, they began to form their own little empire and started afflicting and hurting their own people, taking advantage of them, and enslaving their own people. They afflicted their own people so badly, the Hasmoneans, that the people of Judea wrote to the Greek rulers and said, please come back and rule over us again because it would be better if you ruled over us than the Hasmoneans, the dynasty that freed us from you. And they tried, and there was a fight. And then Alexander Janneus, who was the leader of the Hasmoneans at that point—the king—he got so upset when they petitioned him that he punished the common folks.

He brought 800 men to the gates of Jerusalem. He crucified them. He brought all of their families before them, killed their families in front of them, and let them hang on the cross as they watched their families perish. These are the Hasmoneans. This is the legacy of the Maccabean Revolt. Then the Romans came in and installed an Edomite, King Herod, to rule over Judea. This is the history. Can you imagine being a Jewish person in first-century Judea with that entire legacy as your history? That's all you've ever known. This is the context and the weight when we open the chapters of Matthew and Luke and all of the Gospels.

The Zealots and the Revolutionary

I would fight back. This is why we have the Second Amendment, Matt. We can have our guns, right? Because if this ever happened to us, we would truly, yeah, go get them. Gung-ho. There were many who did that. Many revolutions and revolutionaries during the first century and before who fought against the Romans, who used force against the Romans. Sometimes they'd gain an advantage and then they'd be wiped out. The zealots were more of a down-low group, and they would just assassinate people walking down the street, shanking people. Militia leaders, revolutionaries, they would start battles, but they would never succeed. Never succeed. Always wiped out at the might of Rome.

The Jubilee and the Beatitudes

And then one day, this no-name rabbi walks into a synagogue in Nazareth, and he makes this claim. He says that the prophecy of God's eternal jubilee, where all of those who are oppressed are freed from those shackles—everyone has rest, everyone has blessing, everyone has peace. He says that prophecy has been fulfilled as I speak it. This same rabbi finds himself walking on a beach one day and he sees four boys working with their fathers, tending to the boats and the fishing nets. And he says, follow me. And they follow him. They become his disciples. This rabbi then goes and climbs a mountain all the way to the top and he sits down to teach them.

The four disciples come and follow him. And his name is Yeshua. And he opens his mouth and he says, blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom that comes from above. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Man, they got the good life. Blessed are the meek because they will inherit the land. What does it mean to be meek? I always thought it meant to be humble, right? What does it mean to be humble? Oh, we're not arrogant, right? Now, they will inherit the land. Sometimes that verse is translated as they will inherit the earth. Pretty neat. That's a legit translation.

But the word can also mean land—like a specific land, like the land of Judea or Israel. And I believe that's more the correct context here for this translation: the land. The land that the Judeans in the first century did not own but were forced to work and pay profits to Rome. And Yeshua says that they will inherit the land. They will take control of the land. They will find themselves in the seat of power to manage the land the way that they should—not through affliction, manage the land not through oppression, manage the land not for profit of a particular people group, but to manage the land with justice and righteousness, to manage Eden, to manage it like Eden.

Who is the humblest man ever to live? Moses, that's right. Yes, it says that here in Numbers 12, verse 3, right? Moses was a very humble man, more than anyone else on the face of the earth. So that's the type of—maybe that's what meek means. Meek means to be humble, maybe not full of yourself, not forcing yourself onto others. Traditionally, who do we think wrote Numbers? Moses? That's convenient.

The humble will find themselves in the place of power. Okay, so if I want to be meek, if I want to be a landowner and have all the power, right? What do I got to do? Like the rich man, what do I got to do? Okay, so don't be prideful. Check yourself. Okay, swallowed it. Good. That should be enough to gain the inheritance, right? To transfer like the wealth from the top to the bottom, the power from the top. That's it. Bam. Pretty easy to do, right? Many people prefer that translation in context. There is another view, however. Before I continue, do we want to just stick with that translation, that context?

"Blessed are the meek. Just don't be arrogant. You're good to go." Okay. So that word meek—when we look it up in the Greek Septuagint, the authoritative Greek translation of the Old Testament that was written a couple hundred years before Yeshua, we find that word used in a couple other places. And one of those is Psalm 2711. Yeshua is actually quoting this verse. It says, Psalm 2711, "But the humble will inherit the land." Hey, that's what Jesus just said. "And they will enjoy abundant blessing, abundant prosperity, abundant peace, abundant wealth." Yeshua is quoting Psalm 37—sorry, not 27, 37—with the connections to so many other places.

The Meaning of Meekness

But the thing about the word humble here in the Hebrew—in Psalm 37—is that it doesn't simply mean "don't be arrogant" like how we would think humble means. Not that these people aren't arrogant, but it really means the status of a nobody. You're insignificant. You're not important as a person. It means that your value as a human is not that, but your value is to the structures of power in the world that would rather objectify you and profit off of you. You've been objectified for what you produce for others or what others can take from you. You're a nobody except for what we can take and steal from you.

See, sometimes we forget to consider that a humble person could be someone that has been humbled forcefully. Blessed are those who have been humbled forcefully. The word there is anav. Anav, that's what it means. And here are a few verses where that same word is used at other places in the Old Testament. You guys ready? Psalm 9, 12. I thought it was humble. I thought it was people who just aren't arrogant. The root word of this is anah. It means to be wretched or suffering or to be forcefully made to submit, humiliate, oppress. "Don't be arrogant and you get the reign of the land as the landowner."

I don't think that's all Yeshua was trying to say with this verse. It sounds nice, but I think Yeshua is speaking to the people who have never known anything other than that. They had no privilege. They had no status. They had no real power—the Jewish people in the first century.

The Oppressed in the Kingdom

The most powerful positions were, as we see, held by the religious elite within the Jewish community. I mean, that was the most power you had. It was managed by the religious elite, and we saw what damage and power they had. But even they were exploited by Rome and pushed and afflicted. Do you guys know that in the first century in the temple, they were required to make two sacrifices a day in honor of Caesar, who's considered a god, by the way? That was part of the deal. That was part of being under the Roman foot. Hmm. Those are the ones with the good life—the oppressed. Those that have been humbled by force, they shall formally and without contest become the landowners, the people of power, the people that make the decisions, the people that manifest Eden despite the snakes that slither all over the place.

These are the people that will manage it. The good life, according to Yeshua, belongs to those who suffer and yet do not seek revenge, but only God's glory and the welfare of others. The meek lovingly trust God and hope God's timing and God's justice will come soon. It's almost a synonym to the first beatitude, poor in spirit.

Meekness in Action

So what does meekness look like in this context? Well, blessed are the meek. The meek who Yeshua is speaking about—it means that they're not filled with wrath. Meekness does not look like anger or violence. It doesn't look like taking things to profit. It doesn't look like thievery. It's not rapacious. The meek are not thieves. They do not do violent takeovers at the expense of other people. The meek choose to absorb unjust conditions in the form of non-violent, non-retaliatory resistance. Force is so strong that it cannot help but to create a counter-cultural community of love, justice, and God's peace.

Meekness doesn't just stand by and do nothing. Meekness stands at the front lines and looks like hope against evil. The entire chapter of Psalm 37 is fascinating because it's about God's justice and vindication of the anav, of the oppressed people. And it mentions inheriting the land five different times. And when we put these first three beatitudes together, we find Yeshua blessing and proclaiming an ironic and almost disturbing, but a powerful sense of hope nonetheless. These are not the ones that stand with those who... These are not the ones you see playing both sides of the field. They're the ones who stand with the mourning because they too are mourning.

These are the sorts of people that are and will be in the kingdom of God. And that's hard. That's hard.

Hope for the Oppressed

This message of Yeshua was spoken to James William: "Have hope, for yours is the plantation of Brattansville. Blessed are you, James William, for yours is the land to cultivate Eden." This is the message that tells the indigenous people of the Americas—those that were here when the boats landed and those still here today, teaching my son about their beautiful culture. It speaks to them and it says, "Have hope. For yours is the land of the United States of America. Yours is the land of Canada. Yours is the land of Mexico, of Brazil. Yours is the land of Argentina." To those all over the world that don't even know how afflicted they are because of the greed of absolute evil in the guise of consumerism, the health conditions that go undiagnosed and kill without ever being attributed to what caused them, those who are the cannon fodder for the corrupt tactics that push people into generational poverty: "Yours is the Guar field in the Middle East.

Yours is the East Texas oil field. Yours are the opiate fields of Afghanistan. Yours are the farmlands everywhere." Blessed are the meek. So have hope. Have hope and do not give up. Do not sit idle. Resist. Resist. Push back. Defend those who are mourning and stand as a counter-kingdom ambassador. And the only stipulation about being a soldier for the kingdom, the only stipulation is that you can never look like them when you do it. So do it. Shout it. Stand against it. Protest however you want or can. Stand as the resistance of those who bring harm and oppress and afflict, wherever and whoever. And to those who are living in a state of affliction or oppression: have hope and stand with others so that we can usher in a new age and a new kingdom, the kingdom of Yeshua. Amen.

Closing Prayer and Worship

Please stand with me as we conclude services today with worship. And if you need prayer today for any reason, if you need something to pray about, if you have someone you need to pray for or would like to submit to be prayed for, guys, we have a prayer team on either side of the stage during worship. I invite you. Just walk up. Don't be shy. And these are prayer warriors that will stand with you, will lift your needs up or the needs of others up alongside you. Alvina Malkano, our Father, our King Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come before you and to see the reality of just how serious you are about the integrity of your kingdom, about what it looks like to be a kingdom people, about what a society of kingdom people looks like, for what will be endured and what will be resisted.

That your Holy Spirit, filled with life that is within us now, that it would continue doing what it's supposed to do: to strengthen us, give us hope, and give us wisdom to push back against the ways of the world and stand, to blossom as an ambassador of the kingdom of heaven on earth. In Yeshua's name we pray. Amen. Let's sing the Shema. Shema Israel Adonai Adonai U'sheh Amalutot Yolah. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity. And may the Lord also cause you to increase and overflow in your love for one another and for all people, in order to strengthen your hearts as blameless and holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Yeshua, his holy ones, his Kedoshim.

And may the Lord bless you and may he keep you. And may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance toward you and give you his peace. Amen? Amen. Shabbat Shalom. Info@foundedintuth.com