May 3, 2024 • 28 mins
episode 70
If you aspire to live Jesus' idea of the best version of your life, this nuanced exploration of Matthew 5:5, Blessed are the Meek, is an episode you won't want to miss. Join hosts Scott and Mattie as we explore these rich, multi-layered biblical teachings and their relevance to modern Christian life.
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In our latest episode of the "Harder Way Podcast," we continue focusing on the Beatitudes. We define meekness as a strength under control rather than weakness or mere humility. Drawing from the original Greek text, we compare meekness to the disciplined training of a war horse, symbolizing both strength and gentleness.
The episode also examines the life of the Persecuted Church, highlighting the spiritual rewards emphasized in the Beatitudes and exploring meekness as courage in the face of adversity and trust in divine guidance. We encourage listeners to seek God's direction over fear-based decisions, underscoring the importance of respect and submission to God for a richer life experience with Christ. Join us as we explore these rich, multi-layered biblical teachings and their relevance to modern Christian life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:53):
To the Harder Way podcast. Feeling blessed? I am feeling blessed.
Are you feeling blessed? Maybe not blessed.
I'm feeling blessed because we are talking about the Beatitudes,
which for those of you who weren't here with us last week, we would encourage
you to go back and listen to that first episode where we give a really in-depth
(01:13):
introduction of what the Beatitudes are.
But just as a little refresher, the Beatitudes were the first portion of Jesus's
Sermon on the Mount, which was really his most important teaching.
And we know it was his most important, not because he stood up, but because he sat down.
And that was the thing in the ancient Near East.
(01:34):
And we're looking at culture and understanding from the perspective of the original audience,
there's things that are said and that are done in this passage that draw our
attention to specific verses, things that draw our attention to going back to
the books of poetry in the Old Testament.
(01:55):
So literally, all of these Beatitudes have Old Testament references tied to them.
And then just using the blessed R formula takes the listener or the original
audience, oh, this is like, this is poetry.
So you're going to hear this like poetry.
And that's important because Because we're not going to talk about these verses
(02:16):
this week, but the next two verses we're going to talk about,
by the way, this has turned from a two-part series to probably more like four or five part.
But there's a lot of meat here, and we really want to get it to you.
This is important stuff for living the way we need to live in our current context.
So we thought it wise to dig in a little deeper. We didn't think we could really
(02:36):
do it justice and give proper explanation to these things in only two episodes.
Episodes, honestly, we still aren't going to be able to go as in-depth as a
person could, but for all of you out there and with the format of a podcast,
we're going to do our absolute best to explain as much as we can to you guys.
And also to give you how we see the blessed life in the persecuted church expressed in.
(03:03):
Continuity with these Beatitudes. And where does the word Beatitude come from?
So Beatitudes, it's not about being and it's not about attitudes.
It just comes from the Latin word Beatitudinum, which means blessedness or a state of being blessed.
So that just comes from when the majority of people, the only Bible that was
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around really was the Bible that was in Latin.
And so it just came to be referred to as the Beatitudes because in the Latin
Bible, it said beatitudinum at the top, because what are the first two words
of all of them? Blessed are.
And blessed are, this is not a promise of happiness.
It's not a promise of good fortune. This is Jesus saying, if you want to live
(03:47):
the best version of your life,
if you want to live a life where you, you know, your best life now,
to steal a phrase, famous author, this is Jesus's version of the book.
This is the book that would not have sold any copies because this is not how
to get wealthy or how to gain worldly possessions.
This is how to gain heavenly reward and spiritual rewards, the rewards of the kingdom.
(04:11):
And so we're going to start, we did blessed are the poor in spirit for there's the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. And this week we're
going to zoom in on blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
And so again, you have that reversal of expectations where you see this,
you're going to inherit the earth.
Great. What do I got to do? Be a warrior, be a conqueror, go out and fight,
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fight the great cause. You've got to be meek.
Wow. It's an interesting word. It is meek because it sounds like weak.
It does. I think that most people, when they hear the word meek,
they think of like, you know, a little church mouse.
Like they think of like the little quiet, timid, doesn't want to stir the pot,
(04:55):
just sit back, super shy, like, you know, kind of a scaredy cat.
Right. I think that's probably what most people think of when they hear meek.
Right. And interestingly, at least interesting to me, this word,
this is one of those translation issues.
Again, they're all throughout this passage where we just don't have precise
(05:18):
words in modern English to use to translate these.
And so it's really beneficial to dig into the Greek, to dig into the culture
from the time in order to get a deeper understanding. Because Jesus.
Jesus put a lot of depth of meaning into these.
(05:39):
Like I always say, don't try to read between the lines in the Bible,
but if you can learn how to pull up the words and look underneath them,
there are treasures buried in there.
That's good because that's really what we're doing here. And you mentioned earlier,
trying to dig into the cultural context, trying to understand the genre in which
Jesus was speaking and, you know, kind of how that all comes into to play as
(06:03):
well as looking at those original languages.
And so, you know, people can get confused and say, well, the Bible says this,
and why do you need to have to have all this extra information?
Well, the thing of it is, it just helps us to get a bigger, clearer,
deeper picture of what these things mean.
(06:24):
If you're looking around and you are looking into cultural context and things,
and you come up with something that is the complete opposite of what the Bible
clearly says, then you're getting off track.
Or if you come up with weird new doctrines or things, but if you're just getting
a deeper, clearer understanding of something that's already there,
that's a really helpful thing.
(06:45):
And that's what we've been trying to do as we've been going through.
And let's not diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this.
You can pray, and Holy Spirit can lead you to deeper understanding and to a
greater intimacy with the Lord.
And so there are millions of people who have only had a Bible and had nothing
else, and they've been just fine.
(07:07):
Exactly. Exactly. So this is really the information we're sharing is really
more of an embarrassment of riches that comes from our current location,
our current status, our current availability of information.
It may not always be this way, but for this moment, while we have it,
we're just taking advantage of it and trying to get everything we can out of
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the scriptures because God's blessed us to be here now with these things available to us.
Yeah. So really just being a steward of what is available.
So if what we said is not what meek means, if that's not just quiet,
scaredy cat type of thing, what does meek actually mean then?
(07:51):
Well, it's interesting. First, I want to point out that there's,
we say blessed are the meek, and I believe that's the English Standard Version's translation.
Other translations will say blessed are the humble.
I don't think humble is a good translation at all. Others will say blessed are the gentle.
Gentle is a good translation, but only if you have an understanding of training horses. Right.
(08:17):
Oh, okay. So something about horses. So what does it mean when a horse has been gentled?
So when a horse has been gentled, it means that you've taken a horse that was,
you know, wild and you have basically gotten them to the point where they are able to listen to you.
They've come to be paired up with you and they're able to live either with other
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horses or live, you know, in a barn, be out and they can kind of live within a captivity in a sense.
And they're able to listen to your commands, follow what you're saying and be
a partner and help to you.
And there are different ways of gentling horses. I'm not by no means an equine
expert, but there are some of the ways I've seen demonstrated by Native Americans
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where they would take the horse into water,
and then they would get on the horse in the water and basically break the horse
in the water, get the horse to tolerate them.
And then once the horse would tolerate them on their back, lead them out of
the water and then run the horse to bond with it. Yeah.
There are other methods I've seen Native Americans have used.
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There's one where you'll get a horse in a corral and you'll just take a rope
and kind of swing the rope behind the horse's feet. It scares it like it's a snake.
And then you don't make direct eye contact with the horse. You're looking away
from the horse and you're getting the horse to look to you for leadership and safety.
Oh, interesting. And I think that's probably most aligned with what the Lord does. Yeah.
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In fact, I had a friend who's a Bible courier that this guy was probably the
closest thing to a Renaissance man that you'll meet in the modern age. He was a painter.
He was a missionary.
He was a musician.
He was a carpenter. He was a mechanic.
The list goes on. The list goes on. He dabbled in languages and cooking.
(10:14):
And in fact, he went to North Korea to help with an orphanage.
And he got locked down when they had the bird flu epidemic, you know, 20 years ago.
And he wound up spending six months in North Korea, stuck there. How many people-
In the United States can say they've ever even been to North Korea.
And I'm talking white guy with blue eyes in North Korea.
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Before he left, he got North Korea's version of a green card.
Oh, that's crazy. I know. He's like, I'm not coming back, man.
When they let me out, I'm out of here.
Appreciate it, but I'm going to pass. Yeah, I said, what'd you do for six months
besides help with the orphanage and help build up the orphanage? He said, I starved a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, things are rough over there. Yeah. It's, yeah.
So as an aside, pray for our, there are Christians in North Korea.
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Pyongyang used to be called the Jerusalem of the East because there were so
many Christians there, and they were just massacred en masse after the communist takeover.
And so we want to make sure that we remember to pray for them because they are
probably some of the most persecuted Christians in the world.
(11:20):
So yeah, pray for your North Korean brothers and sisters when they come to mind.
And anyway, so this brother did that. But one of the things he also did, he was a cowboy.
Like he rode horses and trained horses. Renaissance man is definitely a fitting title.
And he said that what he learned about training horses and about breaking horses
was the most valuable information he had learned anywhere about how to disciple
(11:44):
people, especially troubled youth.
Okay. And he used a lot of the same techniques, kind of that rope technique
I was telling you about. And he used a lot of those techniques,
and he said, if I tried to gentle them like the way I gentled a horse.
I found it very effective.
Wow. Interesting, right? That is actually quite interesting.
Yeah, we should probably start riding horses, Maddie. I think there's a relationship
(12:07):
there the Lord intended for us, I think, between man and beast.
I agree. Okay. I like that. We'll put that on our list of things to do before the year's out.
So anyone who's listening who lives near us and has a horse.
I'll need a really big horse that's very strong. like a German draft horse yeah.
(12:27):
Anyway, as an aside, but this idea of meekness, though, you said in some translations,
I believe in the NASB, it's translated as gentle, but it's not talking about
gentle as in sweet and quiet and delicate.
No. It's talking about it in the sense of being gentled.
Like a horse is. Right? Okay. And so this term was actually used a lot with training war horses.
(12:52):
And if you read our courier update, you'll know that Don has written a few articles
following this theme of warhorses and comparing some of our Bible couriers,
our long-term Bible couriers, to being warhorses.
In fact, the August issue will have one of the couriers talking about her training as a warhorse.
(13:15):
Wow. Very fitting for today's podcast. And it's fitting also because,
you know, warhorses weren't exceptionally large. They were smaller horses.
They were armored up. They were strong. But the thing about a warhorse was they
were trained for battle.
They were ferocious. I mean, they would rear up and kick the adversary.
I mean, they were like a tank in that day, basically, their own personal tank.
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And the warhorse was a powerful beast, but it was meeked.
It was under the control of its rider.
It was in submission. It did not fight against its rider.
Yeah. It was in submission. It wasn't asserting its own will,
even though in any given situation, it would have been, a war horse would be
(14:00):
capable of getting out of a specific situation or getting into another situation.
Because they would have had physical ability.
Horses are very intelligent animals. animals and yet
this war horse is in
complete submission to whoever the
soldier is that is paired with them and a
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war a horse that is not meeked a horse that is not gentled is not going to be
useful in battle no not at all or even on daily work just for anything it's
not useful for anything yeah some europeans eat horse meat so i guess it could
be useful for that but that's That's about it. That's horrible.
But think about that from God's perspective, what we become when we are meek,
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when we have been gentled.
You know, it's interesting. He could say, go out and make a name for yourself.
Go out and be a hero. Go out and become TikTok famous.
He could say, do those kinds of things, you know, be famous among men,
and then you'll inherit the earth.
Go out and memorize the Bible, then you'll inherit the earth.
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But he didn't. What he said was, be gentled, be meek.
So he's He's not saying, don't be a noodle-armed, pasty-faced choir boy.
Yeah, which is how a lot of people interpret that. He's not saying to be weak.
He's not saying to be soft and mild.
See, this is right in the—somewhere along the line, the church got the idea
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that men were supposed to be soft.
Almost effeminate. Almost effeminate. And you have the effeminate Jesus portrayed in a lot of art.
Yeah, that's true. And probably it was just a matter of art styles,
you know, through a lot of the times when Jesus was being painted,
men were typically depicted in more effeminate ways because it's more,
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let's just say it, it's more aesthetically pleasing. Amazing.
Well, not only that, at that time, if that he was considered by the people painting
and he would be considered their king.
Right. And so royalty would not be muscular and hard.
That would be for the common folk, the plow folk. I would think you wouldn't
want to portray them that way.
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Yeah. And they only had what they knew. They didn't have something else to draw upon.
So they were just drawing what was familiar to them and communicating things
artistically in the way they would know in their culture. And that just all
kind of passed down and became part of our own cultural imagery.
And then we have imputed our own understandings of what certain visuals mean.
(16:36):
And so we've said, oh, you know, every image I've seen of Jesus,
he looks like this, which means he must be like that. Right.
So I think this idea of this effeminate weak male is wrong.
We are supposed to be, as Christians, we're supposed to be ferocious.
We're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be powerful.
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We're supposed to be capable. We're supposed to be able.
And we're supposed to have all of that under the control of the writer.
Like just like a war horse. Of the master, right? Yeah, just like a war horse.
Completely under control and submission to the master. And here's the thing
that's really important.
You can hear submission and get a really bad taste in your mouth and think of it as a negative thing.
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But here's something we also need to remember. We're told that Jesus chose to
submit his will to the will of the Father.
Right. So if you're saying there's something wrong or bad about submission,
Jesus lived in submission.
Right. We also need to understand that this word, this word for meeked or gentled,
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the Greek word for that, praous, is also used to describe Jesus.
So if you're saying, oh, being in submission and all these things, like that's a bad thing.
Twice in Matthew, that word is used to describe Jesus.
Once when it's referring to, behold, he will come gentle on a donkey's colt.
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That's in that word is the word pros
gentle so strong but under the control
of god and then and then again my father i should the father when he sold my
yoke is easy and my burden is light and he says for i am gentle and lowly that
word matthew 11 that word gentle is gentled in the sense of this war horse concept,
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not gentle in the sense of weak or soft or, you know, mamby-pamby, I guess.
So interesting. So Jesus is telling us, follow him, take his yoke upon us.
And what's interesting to me in this discussion as well is that imagery of how
a young colt might have been trained.
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Rather than putting fear into a horse by beating it into submission,
a young horse would be yoked, or a young ox, but a young horse could be yoked
to an older horse and learn what to do with the older horse rather than having
to be beaten into submission.
So it wouldn't put fear into the heart of the horse.
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And because fear in us, if we think of ourselves as horses, fear in us is a...
Detrimental thing. The only thing we should fear is God.
And that's not an unhealthy fear. That's a fear that delivers us unto him.
It delivers us unto righteousness.
It's not a fear. I'm so scared he's going to hurt me.
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You know, it's not nothing like that. And so when we're motivated and we're
run by fear, we're the opposite.
We're a horse that's been broken badly.
And that all of that That damage becomes a detriment on the battlefield.
Because we assert our own will in dangerous and destructive ways. Because we're scared.
(20:00):
Right. And I go back to the battle lines in the early Revolutionary War.
The Minutemen, the early Continental Army lost a lot of battles because they were afraid.
They didn't have the discipline to stand in their ranks. And as soon as a few
guys would start to fall, they'd break ranks and run because that fear in them
was greater than their faith in the system that they were a part of.
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And we have to have faith in the system we're a part of and faith in the master that we serve.
So we have to trust when the master pulls on the bit and he tells us and he's
pulling us to go right or pulling us to go left, we shouldn't have our own will
and say, no, I know better.
Our will should be, no, the master is pulling me to the right.
I'm going to go in faith and trust the master, trust Jesus, the writer on my back, if you will.
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Yeah. And that's how I am meek. Maybe I'm big and strong and I'm a draft horse
or I'm a Clydesdale or, you know,
like the Clydesdales from the holiday commercials. Maybe I'm one of those.
And I'm big and strong or a Tennessee walking horse, maybe a little pony.
But whatever I am, I'm under submission to the master. her.
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And when he pulls the bridle and the bit in my mouth pulls, I stop or go left
or go right, or he kicks me in the side, gives me a little nudge.
I go into a trot or a gallop.
And yeah, I'm about out of force metaphors. That's all.
I think it ultimately comes down to knowing who God is and who we are in relationship to him.
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Yes. Because if we have a proper understanding of those two things...
We can't help but submit our will to his will.
We can't help but to be guided by him.
We can't help but to fear and love him and want to serve him.
And so if we want to get that understanding of who he is and who we are in relationship
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to him, we have to make sure that we are in the word because you want to know
who God is. You want to know who you are.
Get in the Bible because it's got the answers to both of those things.
Yeah. And pray and worship.
But, you know, even with worship, make sure your worship, you know,
we sing our theology. Make sure your theology and your worship songs lines up
with the correct theology.
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There's some that don't line up very well.
And it can really kind of give you a wrong impression of who God is or who we
are or what we should be expecting God to do or be like.
Yeah. That's an excellent point. But I want to tie it in real quick as we come
towards the end of this, into the persecuted church.
Because when I am with persecuted Christians, I meet meek men and women.
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Men and women who are intellectually, physically capable of being revolutionaries.
Men and women who are physically, intellectually capable and willfully capable
of fighting against the government, of undermining the government,
of rallying people together to build an anti-communist or anti-Islamic movement in their country.
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And yet they do not move or do anything until the master says move.
They are under God's control.
Now, they come out from under that sometimes. I'm not trying to paint a picture
of these folks being perfect.
We know that some of these pastors who used to be like that or have decided,
you know, they've got an opportunity to leave and they left,
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they spit the bit out of their mouth and they're like, well,
I'm going to go run free. And a horse will do that.
Yeah. Your mom always talks about the horse that she rode that kept trying to
take off on a run and kept running under tree branches and scrape her off of its back.
And she'd lay down as flat as she could on his back and try. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. The horse just kept running with her. So a horse will do that. And it's usually fear.
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That's what's going on with these pastors that are free in Cuba.
It's what goes on with all of us whenever we choose not to submit to God's will,
choose not to submit to God's word, choose to assert our own wants and desires
above those that he has for us.
It's always based in fear.
And for us, it's fear of loss, fear of loss of control, fear of loss of reputation,
(24:10):
loss of security, loss of comfort, loss of relationships.
And loss of the word that I was trying to think of that I can't think of.
There's a word that I wanted to use, but I can't.
Anyway. Loss of words. Loss of vocabulary. And I'm a fear to that.
So there's a, there's, yeah, there's a loss, fear of loss. And that fear of loss drives us.
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Maybe even a fear of loss of life. Fear of loss of safety.
Fear of loss of comfort. Comfort and those fears, that fear drives us away from
meekness and into, you know, well, really weakness.
If you want to think about it. From meek to weak. Exactly.
And so if we can ask ourselves consistently, where's the faith in any situation,
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choose the harder way, which is the way of faith.
That's, you know, whenever you have a decision of how to do something,
ask your way yourself and pray about it.
Maybe ask your family or those closest to you that know you the best.
Okay, I have something I need to do.
I have multiple ways to do it. Which way is the way that's going to cause me
to have to trust God the most?
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And then that's the harder way. choose that way. And sometimes you need other people.
You do. Because I think sometimes it can be like, yeah, it would actually be
the hardest thing for me to go and pastor a church in Hawaii because I'm actually
really scared of stingrays.
And so it would be really difficult for me to do that.
(25:39):
So I think my harder way is doing that.
I have this really irrational fear of coconut falling on my head and killing
me. So I'm going to go to Hawaii.
Not to say that no one is called to be pastors in Hawaii.
They need it. And so, of course, there are people that are called to that. I might be called.
But I think that was just an example of sometimes we can take things that are
(26:03):
our dream or that we want to do and find a way to manipulate and say,
oh, actually, I'm really scared of that thing.
So that means that's what I have to do, right? Right? Right.
So to sum up, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
Do you want to inherit the earth? And we're talking about the good version of
(26:23):
the earth, I'm assuming.
The new earth. The new earth. The new earth.
And you want to live your best life right now.
The way to do that is to come under the control, bring all of your strength,
all of your power, all of your intellect, all of your creativity,
all of your willfulness, bring it all under the submission of the master who
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loves you more than you could ever love yourself,
who has the best plans for you, and who will never do evil to you,
who will always lead you in the right path.
Let the Lord pull the bridle. Let the Lord ride on that saddle on your back.
And that is the way you're going to find your best life now, the blessed life.
(27:11):
Your blessed life now, if you will. Yes.
So those are our thoughts on Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
And come back for the most important part of the Beatitudes from the Latin Beatitudinums
next week, where we will get into the middle.
The middle. And there's a reason why the middle is the most important part.
(27:33):
We're going to show you some cool theology if you come back with us next week. God bless you guys.
And we will catch you next week. You better be here. Don't be weak. Be meek.
Weak to meek. Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast.
If you were encouraged by this
episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
(27:53):
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ. Blessed are those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake. For theirs.
Music.
Music.
(00:53):
To the Harder Way podcast. Feeling blessed? I am feeling blessed.
Are you feeling blessed? Maybe not blessed.
I'm feeling blessed because we are talking about the Beatitudes,
which for those of you who weren't here with us last week, we would encourage
you to go back and listen to that first episode where we give a really in-depth
(01:13):
introduction of what the Beatitudes are.
But just as a little refresher, the Beatitudes were the first portion of Jesus's
Sermon on the Mount, which was really his most important teaching.
And we know it was his most important, not because he stood up, but because he sat down.
And that was the thing in the ancient Near East.
(01:34):
And we're looking at culture and understanding from the perspective of the original audience,
there's things that are said and that are done in this passage that draw our
attention to specific verses, things that draw our attention to going back to
the books of poetry in the Old Testament.
(01:55):
So literally, all of these Beatitudes have Old Testament references tied to them.
And then just using the blessed R formula takes the listener or the original
audience, oh, this is like, this is poetry.
So you're going to hear this like poetry.
And that's important because Because we're not going to talk about these verses
(02:16):
this week, but the next two verses we're going to talk about,
by the way, this has turned from a two-part series to probably more like four or five part.
But there's a lot of meat here, and we really want to get it to you.
This is important stuff for living the way we need to live in our current context.
So we thought it wise to dig in a little deeper. We didn't think we could really
(02:36):
do it justice and give proper explanation to these things in only two episodes.
Episodes, honestly, we still aren't going to be able to go as in-depth as a
person could, but for all of you out there and with the format of a podcast,
we're going to do our absolute best to explain as much as we can to you guys.
And also to give you how we see the blessed life in the persecuted church expressed in.
(03:03):
Continuity with these Beatitudes. And where does the word Beatitude come from?
So Beatitudes, it's not about being and it's not about attitudes.
It just comes from the Latin word Beatitudinum, which means blessedness or a state of being blessed.
So that just comes from when the majority of people, the only Bible that was
(03:25):
around really was the Bible that was in Latin.
And so it just came to be referred to as the Beatitudes because in the Latin
Bible, it said beatitudinum at the top, because what are the first two words
of all of them? Blessed are.
And blessed are, this is not a promise of happiness.
It's not a promise of good fortune. This is Jesus saying, if you want to live
(03:47):
the best version of your life,
if you want to live a life where you, you know, your best life now,
to steal a phrase, famous author, this is Jesus's version of the book.
This is the book that would not have sold any copies because this is not how
to get wealthy or how to gain worldly possessions.
This is how to gain heavenly reward and spiritual rewards, the rewards of the kingdom.
(04:11):
And so we're going to start, we did blessed are the poor in spirit for there's the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. And this week we're
going to zoom in on blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
And so again, you have that reversal of expectations where you see this,
you're going to inherit the earth.
Great. What do I got to do? Be a warrior, be a conqueror, go out and fight,
(04:33):
fight the great cause. You've got to be meek.
Wow. It's an interesting word. It is meek because it sounds like weak.
It does. I think that most people, when they hear the word meek,
they think of like, you know, a little church mouse.
Like they think of like the little quiet, timid, doesn't want to stir the pot,
(04:55):
just sit back, super shy, like, you know, kind of a scaredy cat.
Right. I think that's probably what most people think of when they hear meek.
Right. And interestingly, at least interesting to me, this word,
this is one of those translation issues.
Again, they're all throughout this passage where we just don't have precise
(05:18):
words in modern English to use to translate these.
And so it's really beneficial to dig into the Greek, to dig into the culture
from the time in order to get a deeper understanding. Because Jesus.
Jesus put a lot of depth of meaning into these.
(05:39):
Like I always say, don't try to read between the lines in the Bible,
but if you can learn how to pull up the words and look underneath them,
there are treasures buried in there.
That's good because that's really what we're doing here. And you mentioned earlier,
trying to dig into the cultural context, trying to understand the genre in which
Jesus was speaking and, you know, kind of how that all comes into to play as
(06:03):
well as looking at those original languages.
And so, you know, people can get confused and say, well, the Bible says this,
and why do you need to have to have all this extra information?
Well, the thing of it is, it just helps us to get a bigger, clearer,
deeper picture of what these things mean.
(06:24):
If you're looking around and you are looking into cultural context and things,
and you come up with something that is the complete opposite of what the Bible
clearly says, then you're getting off track.
Or if you come up with weird new doctrines or things, but if you're just getting
a deeper, clearer understanding of something that's already there,
that's a really helpful thing.
(06:45):
And that's what we've been trying to do as we've been going through.
And let's not diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this.
You can pray, and Holy Spirit can lead you to deeper understanding and to a
greater intimacy with the Lord.
And so there are millions of people who have only had a Bible and had nothing
else, and they've been just fine.
(07:07):
Exactly. Exactly. So this is really the information we're sharing is really
more of an embarrassment of riches that comes from our current location,
our current status, our current availability of information.
It may not always be this way, but for this moment, while we have it,
we're just taking advantage of it and trying to get everything we can out of
(07:30):
the scriptures because God's blessed us to be here now with these things available to us.
Yeah. So really just being a steward of what is available.
So if what we said is not what meek means, if that's not just quiet,
scaredy cat type of thing, what does meek actually mean then?
(07:51):
Well, it's interesting. First, I want to point out that there's,
we say blessed are the meek, and I believe that's the English Standard Version's translation.
Other translations will say blessed are the humble.
I don't think humble is a good translation at all. Others will say blessed are the gentle.
Gentle is a good translation, but only if you have an understanding of training horses. Right.
(08:17):
Oh, okay. So something about horses. So what does it mean when a horse has been gentled?
So when a horse has been gentled, it means that you've taken a horse that was,
you know, wild and you have basically gotten them to the point where they are able to listen to you.
They've come to be paired up with you and they're able to live either with other
(08:42):
horses or live, you know, in a barn, be out and they can kind of live within a captivity in a sense.
And they're able to listen to your commands, follow what you're saying and be
a partner and help to you.
And there are different ways of gentling horses. I'm not by no means an equine
expert, but there are some of the ways I've seen demonstrated by Native Americans
(09:05):
where they would take the horse into water,
and then they would get on the horse in the water and basically break the horse
in the water, get the horse to tolerate them.
And then once the horse would tolerate them on their back, lead them out of
the water and then run the horse to bond with it. Yeah.
There are other methods I've seen Native Americans have used.
(09:26):
There's one where you'll get a horse in a corral and you'll just take a rope
and kind of swing the rope behind the horse's feet. It scares it like it's a snake.
And then you don't make direct eye contact with the horse. You're looking away
from the horse and you're getting the horse to look to you for leadership and safety.
Oh, interesting. And I think that's probably most aligned with what the Lord does. Yeah.
(09:49):
In fact, I had a friend who's a Bible courier that this guy was probably the
closest thing to a Renaissance man that you'll meet in the modern age. He was a painter.
He was a missionary.
He was a musician.
He was a carpenter. He was a mechanic.
The list goes on. The list goes on. He dabbled in languages and cooking.
(10:14):
And in fact, he went to North Korea to help with an orphanage.
And he got locked down when they had the bird flu epidemic, you know, 20 years ago.
And he wound up spending six months in North Korea, stuck there. How many people-
In the United States can say they've ever even been to North Korea.
And I'm talking white guy with blue eyes in North Korea.
(10:35):
Before he left, he got North Korea's version of a green card.
Oh, that's crazy. I know. He's like, I'm not coming back, man.
When they let me out, I'm out of here.
Appreciate it, but I'm going to pass. Yeah, I said, what'd you do for six months
besides help with the orphanage and help build up the orphanage? He said, I starved a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, things are rough over there. Yeah. It's, yeah.
So as an aside, pray for our, there are Christians in North Korea.
(10:59):
Pyongyang used to be called the Jerusalem of the East because there were so
many Christians there, and they were just massacred en masse after the communist takeover.
And so we want to make sure that we remember to pray for them because they are
probably some of the most persecuted Christians in the world.
(11:20):
So yeah, pray for your North Korean brothers and sisters when they come to mind.
And anyway, so this brother did that. But one of the things he also did, he was a cowboy.
Like he rode horses and trained horses. Renaissance man is definitely a fitting title.
And he said that what he learned about training horses and about breaking horses
was the most valuable information he had learned anywhere about how to disciple
(11:44):
people, especially troubled youth.
Okay. And he used a lot of the same techniques, kind of that rope technique
I was telling you about. And he used a lot of those techniques,
and he said, if I tried to gentle them like the way I gentled a horse.
I found it very effective.
Wow. Interesting, right? That is actually quite interesting.
Yeah, we should probably start riding horses, Maddie. I think there's a relationship
(12:07):
there the Lord intended for us, I think, between man and beast.
I agree. Okay. I like that. We'll put that on our list of things to do before the year's out.
So anyone who's listening who lives near us and has a horse.
I'll need a really big horse that's very strong. like a German draft horse yeah.
(12:27):
Anyway, as an aside, but this idea of meekness, though, you said in some translations,
I believe in the NASB, it's translated as gentle, but it's not talking about
gentle as in sweet and quiet and delicate.
No. It's talking about it in the sense of being gentled.
Like a horse is. Right? Okay. And so this term was actually used a lot with training war horses.
(12:52):
And if you read our courier update, you'll know that Don has written a few articles
following this theme of warhorses and comparing some of our Bible couriers,
our long-term Bible couriers, to being warhorses.
In fact, the August issue will have one of the couriers talking about her training as a warhorse.
(13:15):
Wow. Very fitting for today's podcast. And it's fitting also because,
you know, warhorses weren't exceptionally large. They were smaller horses.
They were armored up. They were strong. But the thing about a warhorse was they
were trained for battle.
They were ferocious. I mean, they would rear up and kick the adversary.
I mean, they were like a tank in that day, basically, their own personal tank.
(13:38):
And the warhorse was a powerful beast, but it was meeked.
It was under the control of its rider.
It was in submission. It did not fight against its rider.
Yeah. It was in submission. It wasn't asserting its own will,
even though in any given situation, it would have been, a war horse would be
(14:00):
capable of getting out of a specific situation or getting into another situation.
Because they would have had physical ability.
Horses are very intelligent animals. animals and yet
this war horse is in
complete submission to whoever the
soldier is that is paired with them and a
(14:21):
war a horse that is not meeked a horse that is not gentled is not going to be
useful in battle no not at all or even on daily work just for anything it's
not useful for anything yeah some europeans eat horse meat so i guess it could
be useful for that but that's That's about it. That's horrible.
But think about that from God's perspective, what we become when we are meek,
(14:47):
when we have been gentled.
You know, it's interesting. He could say, go out and make a name for yourself.
Go out and be a hero. Go out and become TikTok famous.
He could say, do those kinds of things, you know, be famous among men,
and then you'll inherit the earth.
Go out and memorize the Bible, then you'll inherit the earth.
(15:09):
But he didn't. What he said was, be gentled, be meek.
So he's He's not saying, don't be a noodle-armed, pasty-faced choir boy.
Yeah, which is how a lot of people interpret that. He's not saying to be weak.
He's not saying to be soft and mild.
See, this is right in the—somewhere along the line, the church got the idea
(15:32):
that men were supposed to be soft.
Almost effeminate. Almost effeminate. And you have the effeminate Jesus portrayed in a lot of art.
Yeah, that's true. And probably it was just a matter of art styles,
you know, through a lot of the times when Jesus was being painted,
men were typically depicted in more effeminate ways because it's more,
(15:55):
let's just say it, it's more aesthetically pleasing. Amazing.
Well, not only that, at that time, if that he was considered by the people painting
and he would be considered their king.
Right. And so royalty would not be muscular and hard.
That would be for the common folk, the plow folk. I would think you wouldn't
want to portray them that way.
(16:16):
Yeah. And they only had what they knew. They didn't have something else to draw upon.
So they were just drawing what was familiar to them and communicating things
artistically in the way they would know in their culture. And that just all
kind of passed down and became part of our own cultural imagery.
And then we have imputed our own understandings of what certain visuals mean.
(16:36):
And so we've said, oh, you know, every image I've seen of Jesus,
he looks like this, which means he must be like that. Right.
So I think this idea of this effeminate weak male is wrong.
We are supposed to be, as Christians, we're supposed to be ferocious.
We're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be powerful.
(16:56):
We're supposed to be capable. We're supposed to be able.
And we're supposed to have all of that under the control of the writer.
Like just like a war horse. Of the master, right? Yeah, just like a war horse.
Completely under control and submission to the master. And here's the thing
that's really important.
You can hear submission and get a really bad taste in your mouth and think of it as a negative thing.
(17:21):
But here's something we also need to remember. We're told that Jesus chose to
submit his will to the will of the Father.
Right. So if you're saying there's something wrong or bad about submission,
Jesus lived in submission.
Right. We also need to understand that this word, this word for meeked or gentled,
(17:45):
the Greek word for that, praous, is also used to describe Jesus.
So if you're saying, oh, being in submission and all these things, like that's a bad thing.
Twice in Matthew, that word is used to describe Jesus.
Once when it's referring to, behold, he will come gentle on a donkey's colt.
(18:07):
That's in that word is the word pros
gentle so strong but under the control
of god and then and then again my father i should the father when he sold my
yoke is easy and my burden is light and he says for i am gentle and lowly that
word matthew 11 that word gentle is gentled in the sense of this war horse concept,
(18:31):
not gentle in the sense of weak or soft or, you know, mamby-pamby, I guess.
So interesting. So Jesus is telling us, follow him, take his yoke upon us.
And what's interesting to me in this discussion as well is that imagery of how
a young colt might have been trained.
(18:53):
Rather than putting fear into a horse by beating it into submission,
a young horse would be yoked, or a young ox, but a young horse could be yoked
to an older horse and learn what to do with the older horse rather than having
to be beaten into submission.
So it wouldn't put fear into the heart of the horse.
(19:16):
And because fear in us, if we think of ourselves as horses, fear in us is a...
Detrimental thing. The only thing we should fear is God.
And that's not an unhealthy fear. That's a fear that delivers us unto him.
It delivers us unto righteousness.
It's not a fear. I'm so scared he's going to hurt me.
(19:36):
You know, it's not nothing like that. And so when we're motivated and we're
run by fear, we're the opposite.
We're a horse that's been broken badly.
And that all of that That damage becomes a detriment on the battlefield.
Because we assert our own will in dangerous and destructive ways. Because we're scared.
(20:00):
Right. And I go back to the battle lines in the early Revolutionary War.
The Minutemen, the early Continental Army lost a lot of battles because they were afraid.
They didn't have the discipline to stand in their ranks. And as soon as a few
guys would start to fall, they'd break ranks and run because that fear in them
was greater than their faith in the system that they were a part of.
(20:23):
And we have to have faith in the system we're a part of and faith in the master that we serve.
So we have to trust when the master pulls on the bit and he tells us and he's
pulling us to go right or pulling us to go left, we shouldn't have our own will
and say, no, I know better.
Our will should be, no, the master is pulling me to the right.
I'm going to go in faith and trust the master, trust Jesus, the writer on my back, if you will.
(20:48):
Yeah. And that's how I am meek. Maybe I'm big and strong and I'm a draft horse
or I'm a Clydesdale or, you know,
like the Clydesdales from the holiday commercials. Maybe I'm one of those.
And I'm big and strong or a Tennessee walking horse, maybe a little pony.
But whatever I am, I'm under submission to the master. her.
(21:09):
And when he pulls the bridle and the bit in my mouth pulls, I stop or go left
or go right, or he kicks me in the side, gives me a little nudge.
I go into a trot or a gallop.
And yeah, I'm about out of force metaphors. That's all.
I think it ultimately comes down to knowing who God is and who we are in relationship to him.
(21:31):
Yes. Because if we have a proper understanding of those two things...
We can't help but submit our will to his will.
We can't help but to be guided by him.
We can't help but to fear and love him and want to serve him.
And so if we want to get that understanding of who he is and who we are in relationship
(21:56):
to him, we have to make sure that we are in the word because you want to know
who God is. You want to know who you are.
Get in the Bible because it's got the answers to both of those things.
Yeah. And pray and worship.
But, you know, even with worship, make sure your worship, you know,
we sing our theology. Make sure your theology and your worship songs lines up
with the correct theology.
(22:16):
There's some that don't line up very well.
And it can really kind of give you a wrong impression of who God is or who we
are or what we should be expecting God to do or be like.
Yeah. That's an excellent point. But I want to tie it in real quick as we come
towards the end of this, into the persecuted church.
Because when I am with persecuted Christians, I meet meek men and women.
(22:41):
Men and women who are intellectually, physically capable of being revolutionaries.
Men and women who are physically, intellectually capable and willfully capable
of fighting against the government, of undermining the government,
of rallying people together to build an anti-communist or anti-Islamic movement in their country.
(23:01):
And yet they do not move or do anything until the master says move.
They are under God's control.
Now, they come out from under that sometimes. I'm not trying to paint a picture
of these folks being perfect.
We know that some of these pastors who used to be like that or have decided,
you know, they've got an opportunity to leave and they left,
(23:23):
they spit the bit out of their mouth and they're like, well,
I'm going to go run free. And a horse will do that.
Yeah. Your mom always talks about the horse that she rode that kept trying to
take off on a run and kept running under tree branches and scrape her off of its back.
And she'd lay down as flat as she could on his back and try. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. The horse just kept running with her. So a horse will do that. And it's usually fear.
(23:46):
That's what's going on with these pastors that are free in Cuba.
It's what goes on with all of us whenever we choose not to submit to God's will,
choose not to submit to God's word, choose to assert our own wants and desires
above those that he has for us.
It's always based in fear.
And for us, it's fear of loss, fear of loss of control, fear of loss of reputation,
(24:10):
loss of security, loss of comfort, loss of relationships.
And loss of the word that I was trying to think of that I can't think of.
There's a word that I wanted to use, but I can't.
Anyway. Loss of words. Loss of vocabulary. And I'm a fear to that.
So there's a, there's, yeah, there's a loss, fear of loss. And that fear of loss drives us.
(24:33):
Maybe even a fear of loss of life. Fear of loss of safety.
Fear of loss of comfort. Comfort and those fears, that fear drives us away from
meekness and into, you know, well, really weakness.
If you want to think about it. From meek to weak. Exactly.
And so if we can ask ourselves consistently, where's the faith in any situation,
(24:57):
choose the harder way, which is the way of faith.
That's, you know, whenever you have a decision of how to do something,
ask your way yourself and pray about it.
Maybe ask your family or those closest to you that know you the best.
Okay, I have something I need to do.
I have multiple ways to do it. Which way is the way that's going to cause me
to have to trust God the most?
(25:18):
And then that's the harder way. choose that way. And sometimes you need other people.
You do. Because I think sometimes it can be like, yeah, it would actually be
the hardest thing for me to go and pastor a church in Hawaii because I'm actually
really scared of stingrays.
And so it would be really difficult for me to do that.
(25:39):
So I think my harder way is doing that.
I have this really irrational fear of coconut falling on my head and killing
me. So I'm going to go to Hawaii.
Not to say that no one is called to be pastors in Hawaii.
They need it. And so, of course, there are people that are called to that. I might be called.
But I think that was just an example of sometimes we can take things that are
(26:03):
our dream or that we want to do and find a way to manipulate and say,
oh, actually, I'm really scared of that thing.
So that means that's what I have to do, right? Right? Right.
So to sum up, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
Do you want to inherit the earth? And we're talking about the good version of
(26:23):
the earth, I'm assuming.
The new earth. The new earth. The new earth.
And you want to live your best life right now.
The way to do that is to come under the control, bring all of your strength,
all of your power, all of your intellect, all of your creativity,
all of your willfulness, bring it all under the submission of the master who
(26:46):
loves you more than you could ever love yourself,
who has the best plans for you, and who will never do evil to you,
who will always lead you in the right path.
Let the Lord pull the bridle. Let the Lord ride on that saddle on your back.
And that is the way you're going to find your best life now, the blessed life.
(27:11):
Your blessed life now, if you will. Yes.
So those are our thoughts on Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
And come back for the most important part of the Beatitudes from the Latin Beatitudinums
next week, where we will get into the middle.
The middle. And there's a reason why the middle is the most important part.
(27:33):
We're going to show you some cool theology if you come back with us next week. God bless you guys.
And we will catch you next week. You better be here. Don't be weak. Be meek.
Weak to meek. Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast.
If you were encouraged by this
episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
(27:53):
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ. Blessed are those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake. For theirs.
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