In this sermon, the speaker discusses the leadership of Moses and his strength in leading the Israelites out of slavery. The speaker emphasizes that Moses had to be strong in order to unite and guide the people, especially when they were resistant to following him. The speaker also mentions Moses' anger towards the Israelites when they made the golden calf, highlighting that this anger was justified because it was based on the wrong actions of the people. The speaker connects this concept of anger to the New Testament, stating that anger is not only permissible but required when witnessing radical wrongdoing, as long as it is not accompanied by sin.

For the benefit of those who are visiting us today, may I say that a few weeks ago I began a series on the Sermon on the Mount, and we are currently in the Beatitudes, and this morning it is our task to come and look at this very remarkable utterance of our Lord in verse 5, where he says, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Neither ancient nor modern paganism sets a very high price on meekness. In our society, as in ancient times, the important man is the successful man, the man whom we deem, according to our understanding of the word success, the man whom we deem to be successful. And he is usually anything but meek. He's the go-getter. He's the very persuasive, strong character who knows what he wants and goes out to get it, and will get it, irrespective of circumstances. A symbol of him would be something more like a bulldozer than a lamb. That's the kind of man that the modern society appreciates. And then we come back to this. And if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, God incarnate, then this is all the more challenging, because he turns everything upside down, and he says, Blessed are the meek, and then he adds this, and this is to make everything really topsy-turvy as far as we are concerned. He says that ultimately it's the meek who will inherit the earth. A tough man will get something. The go-getter will arrive somewhere and will procure something, but he'll not ultimately win. It is the meek, says the Son of God, sincerely speaking to his followers on this occasion, it's the meek who will inherit the whole earth. Now that turns our canons right upside down. First thing we've got to do is what we've begun to do in chatting with the children this morning. It's to discover the nature of meekness itself. What is it all about? Now against that background of one or two things we said to the young ones, let's look a little more in detail and try to discover what it is. What we said to the children was true, but it doesn't go far enough. The Old Testament and the New Testament, and the contemporary thinking around the Old and New Testaments, they add appreciably to what there said. The first thing necessary of course is to bear in mind that our Lord was there actually quoting from the Old Testament. He was quoting, or if not completely quoting, he was evidently referring to something said in Psalm 37. That's why we read earlier from that Psalm. Psalm 37 and the 11th verse says, according to the Revised Standard Version, which is very accurate here, the meek shall possess the land. The meek shall possess the land. And the Hebrew word there translated meek is variously rendered as meek, or humble, or lowly, or in one of a number of such words. Thus the psalmist is describing a man whose most noteworthy characteristic is his yielded submissiveness to the will of God and to the workings of his providence. Far from grumbling with his lot, however dark and dreary it may be, he sweetly and believingly submits in the assurance that God is good in his nature, that God is all wise in his counsels, and almighty in his works. And on that score he gladly, willingly submits to God and awaits the outcome as God will determine it. He will do everything that God asks him to do in his given situation, but his eyes are upon God. He waits upon God. If you want a summary of his attitude, I suppose you have it in those lines of one of our hymns, My times are in thy hands. My Lord, I wish them there. Nowhere else but there. Or, if you like, there are Horatius Bonar's words, Thy way not mine, O Lord, however dark it be, lead me by thine own hand, choose out the path for me. Take thou my cup, and it with joy or sorrow fill. As best to thee may seem, choose thou my good and ill. That's the attitude. Being thus yielded to the will and the ways of God, the meek person is heir to blessings that the rebellious simply cannot receive. That really is the thrust of Psalm 37. The psalmist loved to dwell, the psalmist as a whole, there are many psalmists as you know, they all seem to like to dwell upon this theme of meekness, but it only comes to its own really in terms of teaching in the New Testament. In the New Testament we find that the Greek word for meekness was used, for example, of a soothing medicine that brings down your temperature and gets rid of the fever. It comes exactly from the same root. You've got the picture, here you are, all hot and bothered, and your temperature's going up, and with your temperature perhaps other things are mounting too, and you tend to get all excited and all hot and bothered, and somebody offers you a dose of medication, and in no time down comes the temperature, and the fever vanishes, and you seem to come back to yourself again. The word for meekness is related to that word. It was also used in relation to somebody out, and it's very closely related to the last illustration, somebody out, shall we say, on a boat, or walking on a very hot and sultry day, and you come to a point in your pilgrimage when you say, I'm just giving up, I'm sweating beads, or streams, or what have you, and there's hardly a breeze, and here I am, I'm just about to pack in, and somehow, somewhere, there comes a beautiful little breeze. You've ever been out like that? Of course you have. Oh, boy, don't you take it in. You almost open your mouth as well as your eyes and everything else. It's so welcome, and if you have two or three breezes like that, it makes such a difference, and you think, oh yeah, I can go on again. Do you know, this same word, the same base, the same root, was also used in New Testament times of the breaking in of animals, particularly of horses. Now, perhaps some of you are strange to farm life, agricultural life. Well, not many of you, I'm sure, and you know, you can't ride a horse until it's broken in. That's part of the miracle of our Lord riding on the foal of an ass into Jerusalem, a foal that had never been broken in, but he was master of it, and it yielded to him, but it had never been broken in. But you try it. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not suggesting you try it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that at all. Don't you try it, because if you do, you'll either get a kick as you draw near, or if you happen to get on the, on the horse's back, you'll soon find a way off again. It's just one of those things you can't do. The horse has got to be trained. He's got to be taught. He's got to be made meek. The philosopher Aristotle regarded meekness as the mean between two extremes, the extremes of violent anger on the one hand, and of cold, careless, angerlessness on the other. Those of you who've studied Aristotle will know of his great doctrine of the mean, and he used to say that this is the secret of living, of finding the mean, of not going to extremes, finding that which mediates between, between two positions. Well, he brought it out in this. He said that it was wrong to be angry at the least provocation, and equally wrong, equally wrong to be so lacking in convictions about anything that you're never angry. And so he goes on to say that the meek man was one whose anger was always at the right time, for or against the right principle, of the right proportion, and for the proper duration. Now he was a pagan. He wasn't a Christian. But I tell you, he goes very far. He has light from heaven there. Such anger of the meek was never on account of supposed injury or insult done to oneself, of course. It's not selfishness, but it is entirely, says Aristotle, as does the New Testament, on account of the fact that something's happening to someone else. Anger is not only permissible in the New Testament, it is required. Be angry, says the Apostle, it's a command, but don't sin. In other words, if you see things which are radically wrong taking place, and you couldn't care less, and you can't open your mouth and you don't say anything against it, it means that you're in a morally neutral position. You're a compromiser. Such anger is, of course, difficult. This kind of anger, the anger of the meek, is very difficult to produce, and difficult to control. We thus find in the Old Testament, and in Greek thought, complex ideas on this subject of meekness. When we examine the New Testament itself, the Christian conception of this virtue, we find that the idea is already expressed out there, but there is something new. There is something new. In the New Testament, meekness is, for example, a quality of life that is evidenced in both attitude as well as action. Not only in the way you do things, but the way you think, the way you feel. It goes deeper than your words, deeper than what is seen, deeper than what is heard. It is an attitude of soul in the first place, and it will ultimately appear both Godward and manward. In relation to God, meekness is an attitude that bows beneath His sovereign will. Now that's been evidenced in some of the things we've said already. Meekness before God is the refusal to find fault or to fight back. Meekness before God bows beneath His sovereign will and gladly submits though you don't know what He's doing. It means enduring what is painful in His providence, in the belief that He's all wise and all good. That's meekness. Obeying His commands out of a willing heart because you believe that He, God, would not have given us such commands were they not for our good and the good of others as well as His own glory. It's meat, that is the meat of the meek man, is to do the will of Him who sent Him and to finish His work. Manward, meekness expresses itself in a gentle graciousness whereby the power to retaliate in kind against someone, someone who inflicts injury against us, is held in check. This is what I wanted to get across to the kids. Meekness bears and meekness forebears. And it does more, of course. It doesn't just put up with things. It refuses to overcome evil with kind, evil with evil. It determines, as Paul tells us in Romans, to overcome evil with good. That's meekness. That's the meekness of Abraham. That's the meekness of Joseph. That's the meekness of David. That's the meekness of Daniel. That's the meekness of Jesus. That's the meekness of Paul. That's the real biblical meekness. Now, lest it should be thought that meekness is essentially weakness therefore, let it be remembered that this virtue is never inconsistent with anger, let me stress that. The Old Testament affords a striking illustration of the meekest man being probably one of the angriest at one stage, namely Moses. In Numbers chapter 12 and verse 3 we are told that Moses was the meekest man of his generation. Was Moses weak? You read the story. Would you like to lead a people like this who have been for 400 years as slaves and have been made a rabble by the circumstances in which they lived? I tell you Moses could not afford to be weak if ever there was a strong man, it was Moses. Really strong to harness all the energies and all the efforts of all these people together and to get them to follow him in the way of the Lord when they were... they didn't want to at the end. And he was particularly angry with them on certain occasions as for example when they made the golden calf. There was a wrong anger at the beginning, we shall refer to that again. But later on there was an anger which was... which was consistent with his meekness. He comes down from the mountain where he's been receiving the Ten Commandments and other laws from God and he finds that this great people that he himself by the hand of God has delivered from Egypt, here they've made idols for themselves, a golden calf. And they're all full of revelry and dancing and immoralities. And he threw the tables down in anger. Why? Because he was a really meek man. Though that sounds strange. Anger is sometimes necessary my friends and I would say to you that part of the problem of many of our evangelical churches this morning is we don't know when to be angry. And we're not willing to face the reaction in the world and in the church when we are righteously indignant with unholy and unbiblical things. Jesus was angry on some occasions. And it was not inconsistent with meekness. Our Lord was angry on a number of occasions. Let me just say... refer to one or two of them lest you've forgotten. I remember for example that occasion when the disciples forbade mothers. Now this seems strange to many good people. You remember the mothers bringing their children to the Lord Jesus. And we read that our Lord Jesus was positively angry. Positively angry. He said don't stop them let them come. Theirs is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. And when he got the disciples out of the way he got the kids come to him and he took them apparently. I think the significance of the Greek is that one by one he took them in his arms, poured his hands upon them and blessed them. As if to say you've done exactly the wrong thing and he was angry with them. That's Matthew 11 29 or Matthew 10 13 to 14 I should say. He was angry against his foes when they blindly condemned his acts of mercy on the Sabbath. They were not willing that he should heal the paralytic man in the synagogue. It was God's will that the man should be healed. It was Jesus own desire as the incarnate Lord that the man should be healed. But some of the Jewish people were frenzied to bitterness. And they wouldn't allow it. Well they had to allow it. But they were angry. And there are other illustrations. On one occasion with Simon Peter himself. After the confession in Caesarea Philippi he turned to Peter and he says get thee behind me Satan. That's anger. And the context tells us so. Get behind me Satan. You don't savor the things that are of God now but the things that be of man. And of course the supreme example of all is that when our Lord goes single handed into the temple. He did so at the beginning of his ministry and he did so at the end of his ministry. To cleanse the temple of its moral impurities. Men had made it a place of business. A place for profit. And some of the great ecclesiastics of the day they were only involved in the business it would appear because of the profit motive. And Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers. And he opened the cages where the pigeons were and let them free. And he says you have made my father's house a den of thieves. It was meant to be a house of prayer for all nations. You've made it anything but. And he did it alone. There is an anger which is consistent with meekness and it is necessary. You can only sin if you do not show anger. Jesus was no weakling. His silence before Herod and his non-resistance in the garden of Gethsemane may suggest that his meekness was weakness. It was not. I suggest to you that Jesus was never more full of courage and real manliness than when having consulted with the father. He said if it is possible let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless knowing what was ahead of him he says nevertheless not my will but yours be done. And when there was no answer or an answer that indicated that the cup might pass from it from him on he goes as manliness. This then is a virile robust phenomenon. The fact that the meek man does not press for his rights but is often lacking in self-assertiveness is not to be interpreted as indicating that he's a spineless creature. Let him who thinks that it is so try for even one day to live a life which manifests biblical weakness. Meekness involves basically real control of yourself. I was in a seminar two weeks ago where a psychiatrist said to the congregation gathered there present it's not people that make you angry you are angry at people. Have we ever taken that to heart? We are responsible for letting ourselves out of control whether it's the tongue, whether it's the eye, whether it's the ear, whether it's the hand or whatever else. And God in his Word the Savior God comes into the world and he says I expect my people to be under control. Meekness is an outgrowth of that. Now it's prospects. Blessed are the meek said Jesus for they will inherit the earth. Now I can hear someone here this morning I'm sure there is one skeptic somewhere there may be more than one. But who's saying now now you're gonna find difficulty with that chump. You're not gonna inherit much with weakness, with meekness are you? You might as well call it weakness because no man's going to get very far with meekness. Well not with men but with God. That's what Psalm 37 is saying you see. That the Israelites are not going to possess the land by dint of their own military strategy and greater power by waiting upon the Lord. That's how they got into the land. That's how the Red Sea let them out of Egypt. That's how the Jordan let them in. That's how the people were overcome. Why? Because of a measure of meekness. Resting trusting in the Lord. Let's not consider the marvel of its prospects. Let's now do that and not let anything eclipse that for a moment. Let's just concentrate on it. Believing this to be the case this beatitude of our Lord is in danger of being relegated and it is being relegated in the teaching of the church and thrown to the waste paper basket because people don't believe that it's true any longer. All current psychology is against this and current theology likewise following suit. Let me therefore be at pains to assure you that it is it is in Scripture and it is true. The only man who will inherit the earth is the meek man. The man who has learned to receive everything from God. Now how? I want to suggest to you that there is a present and there is an ultimate aspect to this promise. First of all the meek man alone possesses the earth today. Secondly the meek man alone will possess the earth tomorrow. Today. Today. There is a present spiritual inheritance which is possessed only by the meek. Now though this principle may be illustrated with reference to Old Testament characters we shall now turn to pages in the New Testament and learn of its fulfillment from a number of those with whom we are familiar and I'm simply going to give you illustrations here. The principle will become evident. Think for example of the banished Apostle John exiled to the Isle of Patmos. Now we've been with him recently in our Sunday evenings and I think this will be very familiar to our Knox people and it's just as well. Here is John banished to the Isle of Patmos for the testimony of Jesus Christ and just because he was a believer. He's not there because he'd be found guilty of any crime against God or against man other than that he believed that Jesus was the Christ and lived accordingly. That's his crime which is no crime. Well there he is. His feet are in chains. He's severed from his friends. They're back on the mainland of Asia. The island of Patmos is between 40, 50, 55 miles maybe out into the sea southwest of the corner of Asia and there he is on this rough rugged and largely uninhabited island. He's alone, scarcely clad, sparsely fed. The old man is nearly 95. Though having to work in the quarries there, in the marble quarries, the old man remembers it's the Lord's Day. What does he do? Well we have a service. He starts off in this first chapter and he tells us of the first service on Patmos on the Lord's Day. He's the preacher. He's the congregation and he's the choir. He's everything combined and he's gone on record and he's told us the first hymn. Unto him that loves us. Not loved as we saw when we were examining that. Examining that. Unto him that goes on loving us. John knew the love of God lapping around the shores of that dark dismal island. Just as the waves of the sea came in, so did the waves of divine love lap themselves around his soul. Unto him that goes on loving us, he says, and has loosed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us a kingdom, even priests to God and his father. John saw himself as belonging to a kingdom. He was the only member of the kingdom there upon the island but he remembered the other subjects and he remembered the king and he remembered the privileges that the king had conferred upon him. That of a priest to go into the presence of God in worship and in prayer and praise. He has made us a kingdom and priests to God and his father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. See that man, that's man inheriting the world. He's on top of everything. He's under nothing. He's master of the situation. He can look the sea and it's roar. He can look at his enemies that are overseeing him as he works in the mines, in the marble mines. He can face all the circumstances and he's above it you see. Now that's what it is to inherit the earth. Now, now, you know anything about that? Take John's apostolic brother Paul and I'm only taking one illustration from this. I really didn't know which one to choose. Then I came across a rendering by J.B. Phillips which made me choose this one. He is quoting from Philippians chapter 4 verses 11 to 13 and Phillips puts it like this, I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances may be. I know now how to live when things are difficult and I know how to live when things are prosperous. In general and in particular I have learned the secret of facing either plenty or poverty. I am ready for anything through the strength of the one who lives within me. You got it? See that man's a king of the world. He's, he's, he's possessing the earth. He rules. He's a king. There is a place my friend in the mind and heart and purpose of God for his children to be rulers, to be kings as well as priests unto God. How you may ask did this man come into possession of so triumphant a spirit? Well the fact of the matter is that in process of submitting to the divine will and of obeying to the Lord's commands Paul discovered resources of grace through the Christ who strengthens me. Through the Christ who strengthens me. Accepting that God chooses my circumstances for me if I trust him in the circumstances he has chosen then in those very circumstances he is able to make all grace abound towards me that I always having all things may abound unto every good work. That's the thought. So Paul says in the very midst of that great passage in Romans 8, in the midst of all these horrible things I've enumerated he says we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. More than conquerors, more than conquerors. This is triumphant living and brothers and sisters the world needs to see what this means. An incident in the life of Towler of Strasbourg affords a very lovely illustration of the truth of this third be attitude. Towler was out for a stroll one day and he met a beggar, a tramp and he spoke to the tramp as Towler always did apparently. And he said to him God give you a good day my friend. The beggar replied I thank God he said I never have a bad day. How wonderful some of us would like to know the secret there. He was a tramp. Towler astonished changed the form of his salutation and now I'm quoting God give you a happy life my friend said Towler. I thank God said the beggar I'm never unhappy. Never unhappy said Towler what do you mean? Well rejoined the beggar when it is fine I thank God. When it rains I thank my God. When I have plenty I thank God. When I am hungry I thank God still. And since God's will is my will and whatsoever pleases him pleases me why should I say I am unhappy when I am not? But what said Towler what said Towler if God were to cast you hence into hell how then? Now listen. But as the beggar paused a moment says the record and then lifting up his eyes upon him he answered and if he did I should have two arms to embrace him with the arm of my faith wherewith I lean upon his holy humanity and the arm of my love wherein I am united to his ineffable deity and thus one with him he would descend thither with me and there would I infinitely rather be with him than anywhere else without him. But who are you asked Towler? Taken aback by the sublimity of the reply said the tramp I am a king. A king exclaimed Towler where's your kingdom? In my own heart by the grace of an almighty God said the tramp. Brothers and sisters he had it you know. He was ruling you see. He was inheriting the earth. Paul said to the Corinthians they were splitting up and dividing. Some of them said I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. I only read Paul's stuff. I only read Apollos' stuff. I only read Peter's stuff. I only read Jesus' stuff. And so they divided up. You know says says says Paul to them all things are yours. In another sense we must say the whole world is ours if we are at the feet of the Lord of the universe. My friend have you any such experience in your life? The meek will inherit the earth. Take the cup the Father gives you no matter what the contents may be. Submit to the will of an all-glorious God. Believe that he is good. Trust him in every last detail of your life and thank him for everything and what. He will give you grace to see that the circumstances are not on top of you. You're on top of them. And so you inherit the earth. But there is an ultimate inheritance of the weak. That's only the half of it. It's only the fortest. What we have just referred to precious though it may be is just but the first fruit of a harvest yet to be. The real blessedness of the meek awaits the day when our blessed Lord Jesus Christ comes back on the clouds of heaven into a renewed earth and a heaven come down to earth. And there he will reign forever and ever. Yeah but wait a moment. And his servants who are joined heirs with him will reign with him. And when all the arrogant and the proud and the wayward and the rebellious have gone each to their own place. The meek will inherit the earth, the heavens and the earth with their glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Will you be among them? Just a word about its production. It's very important. It may have been latent in much that we have said. But it's very important that we do not close without saying a word as to how this is produced. Let's observe that this is not the first Beatitude. And it is no accident that meekness is not mentioned before the first two but afterwards. Jesus began blessed are the poor in spirit. Who are they? They are those who have come to see that they have nothing in themselves that deserves merit with God. That can make God indebted to them. They have absolutely nothing that can state a claim. A legitimate claim before God. Because they have sinned. We have sinned. The truth of the Bible to put it in the words of one of the prophets is this that all our righteousnesses. Not unrighteousnesses. I haven't made a mistake. All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God. What we think is best. What we think is good and noble and upright is shot through with false motives and an evil spirit and whatnot. And it is unacceptable in the sight of a holy just God. We can offer nothing. So that our hymns specify it quite clearly. Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. Naked I've got nothing to clothe me with before God. Naked come to thee for dress. Foul I to the fountain fly. I can't wash my sins away. The man who is poor in spirit is the man who accepts that divine verdict upon his own soul and upon his own life. And you don't learn to develop meekness until you have first manifested that poverty of spirit. But it doesn't end there. The second Beatitude is this. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they that mourn. Now this takes the whole movement deeper. To mourn is to cry because of my condition. To mourn is to feel the pinch of my spiritual bankruptcy. To mourn is to be humbled by it. To mourn is to see that without God in Christ I'm lost. Have you ever seen yourself there? My dear men and women, many of you brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to tell you this morning. All the blessings of the kingdom of God in Christ are beyond you until you see yourself to be lost and begin to sorrow for your lostness. Not because you've been found out that you've done something wrong, but because you're wrong in the sight of God and you're lost to God and you begin to mourn. You know my friends there's hardly anything which is more revealing of our true selves than this. What do you lose sleep about? What do you lose your sleep about if you lose any? Have you ever lost a moment's sleep because of the being you are, because of the character you lack, because you are wrong with God? Have you ever shed a tear because God says you are lost and you know it? Now listen, it's out of that quality of spirit that meekness grows. It doesn't grow anywhere else. You can plant the seed anywhere, but it doesn't grow. But where there is a man or a woman who knows that he or she is bankrupt before God and it begins to weep for sin, then there has gone a brokenness of the soil of the human heart and it is in that brokenness of condition that meekness begins to develop. The fact of the matter is this my friends, meekness will only grow when we're broken, when we're crucified. And for some strange reason in the evangelicalism of the 20th century there are so many people who come into the Christian Church without being crucified. And it's in every church. It's in Baptist Church as well as Presbyterian, in Anglicans as well as Methodists and United, everywhere. Whatever your mode of baptism, even though you may have been under the water and it's supposed to be a dying with Jesus Christ, I know many good Baptists who are still alive and the old ego and the old carnal man is still there. And I've got to have my own way, just as with us Presbyterians. There are a hundred thousand people in the church today who've never never come to birth by dying. And they're not meek. And because they're not meek, our churches are divided, they're carnal, there's no real fellowship, there's no binding together of love, there's no concern, real concern for one another or for the glory of God. Meekness you see makes every man get under the burden of another person. Meekness makes us cling. Meekness makes us look at other people before ourselves. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Here it is. Who was Donald MacLeod said in his prayer this morning? Thought it not something to be grasped, even as equality with God made himself of no reputation. Didn't seek his own place first, didn't argue to be first in the queue, took the last breath even to die the death of the cross. Where does it grow? It grows in this soil. The progress of thought and experience in the Beatitudes is the very progress of experience. This is the way into the possession of it. And therefore I conclude this morning by asking again. It's a joy to be with you, joy to have you in our services this morning today, our service this morning. In the name of my God, in the name of my Lord, I ask you have you ever been broken? Are you a broken man or a broken woman? Are you like a horse that's never been broken and no one can ride you? You'll kick and you'll neigh and you'll scratch and you'll tear everything down. You've never been broken. My friend, you may be in eternity in seven days. It's important for you to see the way of salvation. Start here. And I pray you during these closing moments of our service this morning, acknowledge what God is telling you about yourself. If you're not sure of all the ramifications of it, then start reading the Gospels again. Get out your New Testament. Put two or three hours on one side today. It will be more important than anything in your life. I don't care what visits you propose to make today. I don't care who's coming to visit with you. It's unimportant. Your soul salvation is more important than anything. Read the Word of God. Face God in the mirror. Discover who and what you are. And then see if by the grace of God, as you and I learn to get down in humility, we begin to get me. That'll build the church. Oh, that'll build the church. There will be men and women in business and in society who will say, is something happening to them there? I want to know what it's all about because he's not what he was before. His arrogance is gone. His pride is gone. And with her, it's just the same. Men or women, it makes no difference. Something's happening. Brothers and sisters, this is the way of salvation. The cross is at the heart of it. Not simply historically, but experientially. And Paul sums up his own experience. You remember he puts it like this. I have been crucified with Christ. That's the key to it. I live. I'm alive, he says, and yet it's not me. I'm altogether a different man from the man I was. I am really alive. Saul of Tarsus is alive. I still have the same name, but not the same nature or the same will. Christ liveth in me. Oh, my dear people, let none of us go away from the Word of God, which is so clear. Let none of us evade it today. Rather, let us come to terms with it, that we may be truly saved. And being saved, may be at his disposal to bring the life of heaven into the midst of the life of earth, and the good news of God into the midst of the miseries brought by man. Let us pray. Would you like to make your own response to the Word of God in a moment's quietness? Perhaps it is to yield before him for the first time as a sinner in need of a Savior. Do it now. Perhaps it is that you've discovered that after many years, the old nature is as alive today as it was when you began. Something has been wrong. Tell him so. Ask him for grace to make this a turning point in your life. Mark it into your diary. And say that by his grace, you're accepting this as the Lord's day, a day of resurrection. And by his grace, you mean to discover what he has for you and what he has for me. Oh, God our Father, hear our prayers. Hear our prayers, and especially our acknowledgements of sin and wrong and evil, carnality, selfishness, and egocentricity. Be merciful to us sinners. Save those who call on you, and lead those who out of a conscious need now ask your help. Guide them with your eye, that together we may be a people bearing a testimony to you and fulfilling your purpose for us in this day and age. In Jesus' name, Amen.