James Merritt - I Surrender All
Well, if you know anything about the historical figure named Jesus, anything at all, there's one thing about him nobody denies, even people that don't believe he was the son of God, they don't believe he came back from the dead. It's one of the very first things, as a matter of fact, when you read the gospels, you notice this, and that is the first time anybody ever met Jesus, they immediately noticed he was different. If you lived 2000 years ago, if Jesus had just walked into a room, you would've snatched your head. If Jesus had opened his mouth and began to speak, your ears would've perked up. Something in your heart would've said, there is something different about him.
As a matter of fact, Jesus was so different. He was different from anybody before him, different from anybody after him. Every way you could imagine, he was just different. He was different in the things that he said. He was different in the truths that he taught. He was different in the way that he thought. He was different in the life that he lived. And if you're joining us for the first time, we're in a series we're calling, Get Used to Different. We're gonna be spending the next several months in the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.
And I've been warning you and telling you, if you intend not just to read the sermon, hear the sermon, but live the sermon, you're going to be absolutely different. But I also told you something else. We're already seeing in these beatitudes that so much of what Jesus said was just counterintuitive to what we think, countercultural to the way the world lives, counter to everything in some ways we've ever been taught. Let me just give you just a few examples. Jesus said, if you wanna be first, you must be last. If you want to get, you must give. If you want to live, you must die. If you wanna find, you must lose. If you wanna be strong, you must be weak. If you wanna go up, you must go down. If you wanna lead, you must serve.
And in Matthew chapter five, you'll see that what we're talking about today, because again, we come to one of those strange contradictory against the grain paradoxical statements that Jesus said, and it's just not what you hear in everyday life. And here's what he said. He said, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth".
Now, that certainly goes against the grain of dictators and generals and CEOs, or those I know how to run your life politicians in Washington DC, the financial gurus on Wall Street, the entertainment elite in Hollywood boardrooms. 'Cause that's not what the world says. No, the world says blessed are those with money. Blessed are those with might. Blessed are those with miracles. Blessed are those with missiles. And then Jesus comes along and says, no, blessed are the meek.
Now you gotta keep in mind that these beatitudes are really attitudes are all about character. And Jesus keeps saying, blessed, blessed, blessed. He's saying, okay, do you want to be blessed by God? Well, yeah I do. Well, do you want the hand of God on your life? Well, yes I do. He said, okay, this is how you do it. And what we're gonna learn is it's all about character. Because there are people that Jesus was talking to that day, they weren't necessarily competent, they weren't necessarily confident, they weren't necessarily charismatic. But they did want to be people of character.
And Jesus is telling us in this sermon, no matter what the world tells you, you're not blessed by what you have. You're not even blessed by what you do. You are blessed by what you are. Jesus was not looking for the money people or the mighty people. He was looking for meek people. Blessed are the meek. So before we get into the message, some of you're thinking right now, well what do you mean by meek?
So I want you to get one word into your mind right now and it will tell you everything you need to know about being meek. And that word is surrender. Let's say that together. Surrender. That's what we're talking about, surrender. Now I wanna stop right there. I get it. Surrender's not a very popular word today. Because when we think about the word surrender, we think about losing. Well, who wants to be a loser? We think about admitting defeat. Who wants to be defeated? We think about forfeiting a game or giving up in a fight. It's almost always used in a negative context. 'Cause let me tell you something, it is true about me.
Let me just, if you don't know this about me, you probably could figure it out. We live in a very competitive culture. Now I know this would surprise you. I'm a very competitive person. I know that probably shocks you, okay? I got people I play golf with. My best buddy over here, my son's father-in-law, my buddy down here I play golf with. We have two rules on the golf course when I play. Number one, I talk trash to you. That's a rule I have. I'll let you know right now, I'm gonna talk trash to you.
The rule number two, you don't talk trash to me, I quit, okay? That's the way we play. I'm a very, very, very competitive person. And you know, I was raised that way. My dad taught me what he taught you. Don't ever give up. Don't ever give out. Don't ever give in. And there are times when that's great advice. But then Jesus comes along and says, well wait a minute. There are times, there is virtue, there is value sometimes in giving up and giving in.
So here's what we're going to learn today. This is my whole sermon in a sentence. The way to be in control is to be surrendered to God's control. The way to be in control is to be surrendered to God's control. That's when you are blessed. That's when you're going to inherit everything that God has for you, both in this life and in the life to come. So I wanna do three things today as we talk about meekness. So you can get your booklet out, you can take notes.
Number one, let's define meekness. I think that's a good place to start, all right? Let's define meekness. Jesus makes it plain. He says, blessed are the meek. Well, if that's what it takes to be blessed, I wanna be meek. I think you'd say the same thing, I hope you would. But what does that mean? 'Cause in order to be blessed, Jesus said, what are the attitudes you gotta have? What are the character traits you gotta have? You've got to have meekness.
Now, what does that mean? Well, I thought I'd start off by telling you what it doesn't mean. 'Cause I know, and I'm looking at some people in the room, and you know who I'm looking at, 'cause I know you. We got some alpha dogs in this building. We got some alpha males in this building. You don't like to be told what to do. You want to be in charge. You want call your own shots. You wanna make your own decisions. You wanna decide your own plans, you wanna walk your own path. And there's a few wonder women in here who are saying the same thing right now. I don't wanna be a doormat. I don't wanna be somebody that somebody steps all over. If that's what you're asking, I'm out.
Well, that's not what I'm asking. But I want you to understand something. Meekness, first of all, is not weakness. The only time Jesus ever described himself personally, have you ever thought about this? Jesus only described himself one time in the whole Bible. And in Matthew chapter 11, here's what he said. "I am gentle". Guess what? That's the same word used for meek. "I am meek and I'm humbled in heart". Jesus said, "I'm meek". Well, I can tell you something about Jesus. He might have been meek, he wasn't weak. He was a man. He was a man's man. There was nothing weak about Jesus. In weakness, he was a man of strength and hypocrisy. He was a man of integrity.
In sorrow, he was a man of comfort. In despair, he was a man of hope. In death, he was a man of life. And as you listen to this message, this Sermon on the Mount, you're going to see just what kind of a man he was. Let me go back and remind you who was listening to the sermon that day, and who he stood up to in that message. First of all, he stood up to the religious establishment. You know who was in that crowd that day? The Pharisees, the Sadducees. Well who were they? Well, they were the PhDs. They were the bishops, they were the popes. They were the ones that thought they had cornered the market on religious truth. You didn't tell them what was right and wrong. They told you what was right and wrong.
You didn't tell them how to live their life. They told you how to live your life. And then Jesus comes along and he said something over and over and over, and it ticked them off. He said, you've heard it said, talking about what they said. You've heard it said, but I say unto you. And they're out there seething. Who are you? You carpenter from Nazareth. You illegitimate child of a mother who wasn't even married. Who are you to tell me what I'm to do, what I'm to believe, how I am to live? You've heard it said, but I say unto you. He stood up against the religious establishment. He stood up against the civil establishment.
When he stood before Pontius Pilate, he talks to Pontius Pilate like nobody had ever talked to Pontius Pilate. 'Cause Pontius Pilate basically said to him, you know, I have the authority to kill you. I've got the authority to set you free. And Jesus looked him right in the eye, and he said, you have no authority except the authority my father gives to you. He stood up to the civil establishment. And I love this. He stood up against the business establishment. I've told you before, I would've loved to have been there that day when he went into that temple with that whip. And he's flipping tables and he's whipping rear ends. And he's driving people out of that temple.
I mean, you're talking about the CEOs, you're talking about the presidents. You're talking about Wall Street bankers. And Jesus walked into that temple and everybody else was shaking in their boots. Everybody else was scared. Everybody else put their head in the sands. Everybody said, I'll just pretend the house of God's not desecrated. And Jesus walks into that temple with that whip, and he looks at those guys and he said, not here, not now, not today, no more. He stood up to the religious establishment. Weak people don't do that. Weak people don't stand up to city hall. They don't stand up to false prophets. They don't stand up to giant corporations. They don't stand up against political correctness.
Meekness is not weakness. Tell you something else. Meekness is not wimpishness. You don't have to be wimpish to be a meek. The Bible says this about a man named Moses, in Moses, chapter number 12, verse three. Moses was a very humble, by the way, the word in the Hebrew, same word in the word Greek. A very meek man, more meek than anyone else on the face of the earth. Well, Moses might have been meek, he wasn't a wimp. You don't walk into the palace of the most powerful ruler on planet earth who could take your life just like that and think nothing about it and point your finger at him and say, let my people go.
Wimps don't do that. Wimps don't say, okay, I'll take the job of leading millions of people through a wilderness, parting a Red Sea, and I will do it for 40 years and never, ever, ever, ever forsake my duty. Weak, meek, wimpish people, they don't do that. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is not wimpishness. So when I say I want you to be meek and I wanna be meek, no, I'm not saying be a doormat. I'm not saying be a pushover. I'm not saying be a wet blanket. Let me tell you what the word meek means. In the Greek language, the word meek refers to the taming of a wild animal. The taming of a wild horse.
Now, I've never broken a wild horse and I have no desire to learn how. But I'll tell you two things I know it takes to break a wild horse. First of all, to tame a wild horse, first of all, it has to be broken and it has to be brought under control. That's what turns a wild horse into a tame horse. Gotta be broken, gotta be brought under control. So what is a meek person? A meek person is simply someone whose will has been broken by the power of God, and whose will is surrendered to the will of God. Or to put it in a way you can understand it, a meek person is someone who finally comes to Jesus and waves the white flag of surrender, and says all that I am belongs to you. I wanna be all you want me to be. I wanna do all you want me to do. I wanna go anywhere you want me to go. That is the person who is meek.
So first of all, what does it mean? We gotta be broken before the Lord. As a matter of fact, you say, well why do I to be broken before the Lord? You remember what Isaiah said about us? Isaiah said, we're all like sheep. Here's what he said. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way". In other words, you can't even become a Christian. You can't even be saved. You can't even become a follower of Jesus until you come to the point of meekness where you come to the Lord Jesus and you say, I'm not gonna do it my way anymore. I'm gonna do it your way. It's not my life now, it's your life. I want you to break me. I want you to break me in my ways.
And by the way, we have to continuously be broken because that desire never leaves. If I were to ask those of you who've been saved in any length of time, have you always done what you should have done? Well, no. Have you always gone where you should have gone? Well, no. Have you always given what you should have given? Well, no. Why? Because we still have that desire to go our own way, to call our own shots, to walk our own path. That's why we need to be broken before the Lord.
Now if you're gonna be honest with me, I'm gonna be honest with you. You're saying something like this right now, but I don't wanna be broken. Well neither do I. I'm not gonna lie to you. I don't wake up every morning and go, God, would you just break me right now? I don't do that. I don't wanna be broken. You say, well then you don't wanna be, and yet you say you must be. Why is that? Here's why. If you're not broken before the Lord, you will be broken by the Lord. Because God never uses anything until he breaks it first. Can I ask you a question? You don't need to raise your hand, I know the answer. If I said to you, do you want God to use you? You said, well, sure I want God to use me. Then you gotta be broken, 'cause God never uses anything until he breaks it first.
You say, where do you get that idea? Just go back, read about Jesus. So Jesus sees 5,000 people. What did he first have to do? He had to break the bread. Before Jesus died on the cross, he had to remind the disciples the night before he died, this is my body which is broken for you. Before a woman could wash the feet of Jesus, she had to break an alabaster box. If you wanna be blessed, you've gotta be meek. And to be meek, you have got to be broken. And once you're broken, it means you give all up, all control of your life to God's control for your life. So let me just get real practical. Let me just get real down to earth.
Can I just for a moment, get in your grill for just a minute. So if I've not made you uncomfortable yet, give me one more shot. Meekness is giving God your paycheck and saying, how much do you want me to give? Meekness is giving God your time and say, Lord, how do you want me to spend it? Meekness is giving God your life and say, Lord, how do you want to use me? Meekness is giving God your heart and say, Lord, how do you want me to engage in disciple the next generation? So I just wonder if, just suppose I had a meekness Geiger counter, and just imagine that I could just kind of walk around the room, and I'd just put a little meekness Geiger counter in front of you. How loud would it go off? How much would it sound?
So I want you to ask a question right now I'm gonna put up on the monitor here and on the screen. And I just want you to ask yourself this question, very simple. Are you totally, completely and unconditionally surrendered to the will of God in every area of your life regardless of what it may cost you or what you would want to do? And Jesus is not asking us to do what he didn't do, because this, Jesus was so meek, he was so surrendered, he didn't just wave a white flag, he died on a cross.
So let's define meekness is just surrendering all you are to the total control of God in your life. But that raises something else than we need to do. Let's not just define meekness. Let's display meekness. I mean, what does it look like? I mean, how would you know? If I were meek, how would you know it? How would I show it? How could you look at my life and say, now there is one meek person. Well, let me just give you a primary characteristic that it may shock you. You didn't see it coming, but it's kind of like flicking dominoes. Once you knock this one down, everything else falls into place, okay? Here's the number one way you display meekness. You surrender to the authority of the Word of God over your life.
Now let me just stop right there. If you've heard that once from me, you've heard it 5,000 times. If you've heard it once from other preachers, you've heard it a thousand times. You hear it all the time. Surrender your life to the authority of the word of God. The problem with that is you hear it, but you don't hear it. So what do you mean? I wanna go back to something that James, the Lord's brother, said about meekness and how it's tied to the word of God. Here's what James said in James chapter one, verse 21. He said, "Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that's so prevalent".
In other words, he states the obvious. Quit getting drunk, quit running out on your wife. Quit committing adultery. Quit fornicating. Quit doing drugs, quit cussing like a sailor. Quit doing this, quit doing. We know all about that. It's the second part I want you to listen to. And humbly, guess what that word is? Meek. And meekly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. That word humbly accept, literally says receive with meekness. Now you wouldn't know this, but there are actually two different words of the Greek language for the word accept. There's one word that simply means reach out and tape. Just grab it or snatch onto it.
Now watch this. That's the way a lot of Christians read their Bible. A lot of Christians read their Bible not for transformation, they just read it for information. They're just curious about what it might say about a certain topic or a certain situation. And what's wrong with so many believers is I'm talking about people read their Bible, they get the Bible into their head, but they never get the Bible into their heart. That's not the word that James uses here. It's not the word that's, you know, snatch and grab, kind of take it and do what you wanna do with it and then put it aside. No, the other word for receive, which is the word he uses here, it means to welcome with a humble heart. It means you just don't invite the word of God into your house. You give it to the keys to the house, you give it control of the house.
So you say, okay, I'm not sure what you're saying, so I'm gonna make it very plain. So if I said, well what is this book? What's the Bible? Well, what are you supposed to do with your Bible? You say, well, I'm supposed to read it. That's true, but if that's all you do, not gonna help you. Well, I'm supposed to understand it. Well for sure. Can't do what you don't understand or accept what you don't understand. But you can read it and understand it. That's still not gonna help you. You say, well, I not only need to read it, I not only need to understand it, I need to believe it. Well, of course, yeah, I agree with that. You're not gonna do anything what you don't believe. But now listen to me carefully.
This book is not a book just to be read. It is not a book just to be understood. It's not even just a book to be believed. It is a book to be obeyed. It is a book to be lived. And that's why it goes on to say this in the very next verse. "Do not merely listen to the word". Let me stop right here. I'm glad you come. I hope you keep coming. I hope you'll invite people. One day I'm still praying that every chair in this building will be filled, both services, and there's enough people out there to do it. We got enough people to make it happen. And I'm glad you come. But I'm being honest, how many of you walk in here every single service, and you hear my sermon, you listen to my sermon, you pay attention to my sermon. But deep down, unless it's convenient to you, you've got no intention of applying and living my sermon.
He says, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says". It is one thing to hear the Bible, it's another thing to heed the Bible. You know, if this book is going to come alive to you, if you want this book to change your life, you gotta come to it with a broken heart. You gotta come to it with a white flag of surrender. You gotta make up your mind before you even open it. Lord, whatever you tell me this book to do, I'm going to do it. I hear this so often, pastor, can I tell you why I don't read my Bible? Yeah, tell me why you don't read your Bible. Man, I read it but I just don't get anything out of it.
Well, maybe the reason why you don't get anything out of it is because you won't let it get anything out of you. What good, do you think God's gonna waste his time and reveal to you what his truth is for you if you're not gonna live it, if you're not gonna do it? So I can tell you right now, unless you have an intent, every time you open this book, I'm gonna do whatever you say, then don't bother reading it. It will just be a dead book to you. Let me give you, let's go back to the wild horse and the tame horse for just a moment. I want you to imagine you walk up on a cow pasture, and there're two horses. They're grazing, they look the same. Let's say they're both palominos. Let's say they're both same height, same weight. They both eat grass. They both neigh, they both weigh, they do all those kinds.
Same thing of horses. You're just looking at 'em. What you don't know is which one is tame and which one is wild. You don't know that. You know they're not, you know, one is tame and one wild. You just don't know which one is which. All right, let me ask you a simple question. How would you determine which is the wild horse and which is the tame horse? All you gotta do is one thing. Put a saddle on him. That's all you gotta do. Trust me, you'll know instantly which one's the wild horse. When you're in midair you'll say, yep, that was the wild horse. The difference is the saddle. One will let you ride him, one will not. The difference between so many Christians is some people let this book ride them, some people don't.
And this book will never ride you. You'll never let a saddle of this book be on your back until you're meek, until you are completely surrendered. That's why a truly meek person will get out of his bed every morning and he'll say three words to God every single day. I surrender all. Let's say that out loud. I surrender all. Now we're gonna say it loud like we mean it. Ready? I surrender all. That's what God wants to hear from us every day. Not I surrender most. Not I surrender some. I surrender all.
Let me give, take you back a little history lesson. I remember this, you may not, I'm a history buff. So if you're not, you may not remember it. But there's a fascinating group of people that lived back in the medieval age. They were called Knights Templar, T-E-M-P-L-A-R. If you don't remember who they are, let me just take you back. They were a large organization of Christians, they were soldiers. They had one job. Their job was to protect Christians back in the medieval age to protect Christians that wanted to visit the holy land, 'cause there were a lot of Muslims there and they didn't like Christians. So their job was kind of be the armed guard and protect Christians that wanted to go to the holy land while they carried out military operations.
Well, they're very wealthy. They were well paid, they were very wealthy, they were very powerful. But they're still a mysterious order that fascinates historians even up to this day. But here's the interesting thing about that group. You could not get into that group unless you were baptized by the church. That was a rule, had to be baptized. So they would come to be baptized, and they were to be baptized in their uniforms. But they did one thing. When they went to get baptized, as they went under the water, they would pull out their sword and they would hold it over their head and they would not let their sword get wet. They were baptized.
Everything about them except the sword. And it was their way of saying to Jesus, now you can have control of most of me, but you can't have control of all of me. You can have most of what I have. You can't have all that I have and I'm all yours except one time, one place, when I'm out on that battlefield, how I use my sword, how I fight, who I kill is none of your business. It's under my control, not yours. So here's a good question to ask. Get ready. Buckle your seatbelt. Is there any part of your life that you know is not under his control? So in case you're going, no, I believe I'm perfect. Let me help you. Let's just start with this one. How about your wallet?
I've baptized tens of thousands of people in my ministry. I don't even wanna know how many people I've baptized, but they kept their wallet up here. How about your will? I mean your will, not your will you're gonna die, your will. What you wanna do, the way you wanna do it, is that under his control? How about your work? Is your work more important than your worship? Or how about your anger, your bitterness, your greed, your selfishness? How about your baptism? I preached last service to people. Sat right out there. They were sprinkled when they were babies. They won't get baptized. Doesn't matter what the Bible says. They don't wanna do anything to hurt their mom, their dad, their parents. Well, they did it and I did it. I mean the Bible is so plain about baptism, so plain. When you read the Bible about baptism, here's what it says. There was never a baby baptized in the New Testament. Not one record of one infant ever baptized.
Number two, every single person that was baptized was baptized after they made a profession of faith, after they were old enough to be saved. And number three, every single person was baptized by immersion, not by sprinkling, not by pouring. Every person was baptized by immersion. That's what the word of God teaches. I can show it to you and show you. But just while we're on the subject, the word baptize in the New Testament, in case I've told you this, you may have forgot, is not translated, it is transliterated. They just took the word baptizo, the Greek word, and just made it from Greek to English. There's a word for sprinkling, it's rhantizo. Rhantizo's never used in the New Testament for baptism. So the word baptize, what's the word baptize mean? It means to put under the water and bring back up. That's exactly what the word means.
So if you've never been baptized by immersion since you became a believer, you've never been biblically baptized. Doesn't mean you're not going to heaven. That'd be baptized to go to heaven. What it does mean is you've just never surrendered. So you see, meekness is not only how you relate to the word of God and to the God of the word, it affects how you relate to other people. When you relate, when you're meek, you'll be gentle. You'll be humble. Not just in how you act, but how you react. So let's define meekness, right? We define it, what it is, what it's not. Let's just play it. What is it? Being total control under God. But Jesus is smart. He knows what some of you are thinking, you're thinking, but what's in it for me? Alright, if I do that, if I really surrender all that I am to you, what does that do for me?
So let's just talk about this third thing real quick. Let's delight in meekness. Let's delight in meekness. So what, if you're sitting right there, when I pastor, what is it? What's in it for me to be meek? Well, first of all, I gotta tell you something. If you're meek, you won't ask that question. But let's just say, well what's in it for me? Here's what Jesus said. "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth". Now you say, what does that mean? I'm gonna be honest, I'm not totally sure. 'Cause I did my homework and I read a lot of different commentators, and they're all over the map.
I don't know all that Jesus meant when he said we will inherit the earth. But I'll tell you what I do know he was saying. He was saying this, "When you give God all that should come to Him, you will get all that you'd want to come to you". "When you give to God all that should come to Him, you will get all that you would want to come to you". 'Cause when I read my Bible, this is what I learned. Someday God's going to restore the inheritance that Adam lost in the Garden of Eden. And that includes all of us who surrendered everything we have and everything we are to the one who created Adam to begin with.
So let's look at everybody else. All these people out there, and they're trying to get the earth. So they lie, they cheat, they steal, they try to be number one. They bulldoze people. They bully people. They bribe people 'cause they're trying to get a part of the earth. And Jesus says, forget them. If you want the real world to come to you, you gotta do just the opposite. You surrender. You humble yourself. You wave the white flag to the creator of the universe. You give everything to him. And he says, when you do, you're gonna get all of this in heaven as well. I hate to kind of age people today. I was surprised how many people in the first service did this.
How many of you are old enough to remember there was an old hymn we used to sing when I was a boy growing up called, "This is My Father's World". How many of you remember that song? Some of you do, surprisingly. This is my father's world. Well it is. But you ready for this? If you are meek and you're surrendered, and you give all that you are to all that Jesus is, one day it's all going to be ours. Every bit of it, every rock, every tree, every mountain, every stream, every river is gonna be deeded over to us. It belongs to those who are meek, those who surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every one of us will own everything because we've surrendered to the God who made everything and controls everything. And Jesus says, that's the blessing that await those who are broken before God. That's the blessing of those who are totally surrendered to God. Yeah, maybe you don't have it all now. Maybe you have very little now. One day you're gonna get all of it and more besides. You're gonna get this earth, this new earth, you're gonna get heaven. You're gonna get the kingdom of God. So I'm encouraging us, I'm urging us today, let's follow the example of the God man, the king of kings, the Lord of the Lords who said himself, I am meek and lowly in heart.
Let's be today, let's make up our mind. I'm gonna be the mighty meek to a world that needs to become meek as well. So I want us to do something. I want you to put your notes down, put everything up. Just give me your attention, just one more minute. I want us to recite, I'll call it a prayer of meekness together. I'm gonna put it up on the monitor in just a moment, and I just want you to not repeat it. I want you to really pray it, because it perfectly expresses what a meek person is willing to do. So I'm gonna put it up on the screen. We're gonna take one line at a time. I'm gonna say it one line at a time, and I want you just to repeat it after me, okay? Ready?
Lord, I am willing. I am willing to receive what you give. I am willing to lack what You withhold. I am willing to relinquish what You take. I am willing to suffer what You require.
That's in the front of my Bible. I say it to the Lord almost every day. And I say it, realizing and understanding some of that may very well happen. I say it realizing that there are times when God's gonna do things in my life and do things in your life you didn't ask for it and you don't want it, but he knows you need it. And when those times come, I pray that we will be meek. We'll keep the saddle on, because if we mean it, and if we live it, we will inherit the earth that Jesus came to live in, die for, was raised to the dead from that we might all enjoy it with him forever. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who humble themselves. Blessed are the broken. Blessed are those who give everything they are to everything he is. They are the ones that get it all. They are the ones that inherit the earth.
So you say, thank you pastor, great message, I hope you say for the glory of God. But the question is now, what are some of you gonna do with it? Because let me just bring this down to earth for some of you in this room, some of you listening right now. If you're not ever meek, you'll never go to heaven. Because only meek people go to heaven. Because the first thing you've gotta do to go to heaven is you've got to admit and you've gotta become meek enough to admit you need somebody to get you to heaven 'cause you can't get there on your own. You need to become meek enough to realize your baptism, your church membership, your good works, the money you gave to charity, the good deeds you did to other people, filth is zero apart from Jesus Christ.
That's when you get saved. That's when you come to the, that's when you know, okay, now I know where I need to be. You can never get God where he needs to be in your life to you get you where you need to be in yours. And that's when you're meek, lowly of heart. Some of you've never done that. You've never come to a place in your life where you realize, Jesus is not just an option, he is a necessity, if you're going to heaven, you have a relationship to God. And it may be there's someone in this room right now. You know who you are, you know where you are, and you need to pray something like this right now:
Lord, I've never been a meek person, but I am now. I am lowly in heart. I'm a broken person. I realize I need you not just in my head but in my heart. I need you to become my Lord. I need you to become my savior. I believe you died for my sins. I believe that God raised you from the dead. I believe you're alive right now in this moment, meekly, humbly, lowly. On my face before you, I surrender all.