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[Silence] Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. When he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying,

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"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,

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for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

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Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, and men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

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May the Lord bless to us the reading and hearing of his word. All turn to hymn number 79, 79, "At the Cross." [Music] Let us all stand.

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[Music] ♪ For the land that gives life to the free ♪ ♪ And gives us all its light ♪ ♪ The people stand still ♪

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♪ In the hope of a better life ♪ ♪ And the world's last straw ♪ ♪ Where I play all night ♪ ♪ And the days of the long road ♪

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♪ Wait ♪ ♪ In the meadow I look ♪ ♪ I see the church ♪ ♪ And I can't help but feel ♪

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♪ The old days ♪ ♪ For dear old San Francisco ♪ ♪ We love our mother dear ♪ ♪ Our native land we hail ♪

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♪ The true Northeastern free ♪ [Music] [music] [Music]

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[Music] ♪ There's no place as beautiful as I can be ♪ ♪ At the prom, at the prom ♪ ♪ There I prayed all night ♪

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♪ At the fairest of my heart ♪ ♪ Oh, there ♪ ♪ Where in my fair eyes ♪ [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Bee Attitude] For our morning message, we are considering the Bee Attitude.

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[Bee Attitude] And our attention today, [Bee Attitude] should be focused upon the third Bee Attitude,

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[Bee Attitude] according to the Gospel of Matthew, [Bee Attitude] Chapter 5, verse 5, reads,

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"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The subject of the message,

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"Stoop to conquer, stoop to conquer." This beatitude, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, is a divine mandate for the happy life.

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It is a word of instruction on the highway of happiness. To be meek,

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to be lowly of heart, Blessed are the meek. Happy are you. Salvation is yours.

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You are humble. Blessed are those who stoop to conquer. Ours is a world in which we seek to assert ourselves. We want to be sure that people give us our just due.

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We want to be sure that we get the kind of recognition and respect that we deserve. It's just natural for us to be self-assertive, to be aggressive, to be pushy. This is what is called the pride of life. And there is something in every one of us that wants to rule, that wants to dominate.

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And we ordinarily think of the persons who are most blessed as the persons who have most people under their thumb, a large number of people under their thumbs, who can sort of have their way. And so you see meekness is not ordinarily thought of as a means of happiness. The world says to us, "Blessed are the high and mighty."

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We think of those who are most blessed ordinarily as those who are somewhat lifted up in pride. But the world says, "Blessed are those who know how to strut their stuff. Blessed are you if you have learned how to toot your own horn. For if you toot not your own horn, the same shall not be tooted."

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And here before us in this word concerning the happy life, "Blessed are the meek," is the magna caja for the citizens of the kingdom of God. Here is a guideline for the happy life, "Blessed are the meek." Blessed are those who stoop to conquer.

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Well, we do not extol meekness ordinarily because it is generally thought that meekness is a sign of weakness. Years ago there was a character in a comic strip whose name was Casper Miltos. He was a timid soul.

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It seemed that he was resigned to accepting whatever happened. He never protested. No matter how one treated him, he took it. He never would fight back.

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He was submissive. He was one who could easily bend in any direction, the timid soul. And this ordinarily is the way many people think about meekness.

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as a sign of weakness. And there are many who are quick to say, "I'm not gonna take this. I don't have to take this. Look who I am. I'm not gonna let anyone run over me." But, uh, meekness

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is not weakness. It is not letting evil run rampant in the world. The world seems to think that, uh, strength is not in submitting to authority.

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The world seems to think that strength is in wielding authority, not how much you can submit to authority, but how much authority you can give. That's the way the world looks at it.

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And so we have the tendency to look upon meekness as weakness rather than as strength. But here it's sort of turned around for us. Instead of saying that meekness is weakness, Jesus is saying to his followers that, um, meekness is a sign of strength.

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If you really want to be strong, be meek. When we look at our world situation today and we consider how President Carter is, uh, handling the Iranian crisis, And so many people are saying that he's not dealing with it from a position of strength, that this is a nation that doesn't have the military strength that we have.

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We have weapons and we could go to war, we could bomb the nation, we could take over the oil fields, and we need oil, and they're mistreating us, they're holding our hostages. We ought not wait. We ought to just move in and

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might can make right in this situation, but just to wait around until they make up their minds. This is dealing with them from a point of weakness. This is what the, uh, quick to say in the arena of international affairs, but not so with Jesus.

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Listen as he says, "Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who stoop to conquer." Those who win the battles of life are not those who rebel against the divine authority. For those who win the battles of life are those who are submissive to the divine will, who are meek and lowly in heart, who are willing to bend low, who are willing to stoop in their

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submission to the divine will, and in being willing to stoop, they are enabled to conquer. "Meekness is the way." This is in the words of John the Baptist, that wilderness prophet. "As he beholds the Son of God," then he says, as he points to Jesus,

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"Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." Then the Baptist also says that he must increase and I must decrease. Now that's true for every one of us. That's a great big "I" because we are so wrapped up in it.

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Sometimes that's why we have so much trouble. Sometimes that's the problem we have in the pool. Sometimes that's a problem we have in our choir. Sometimes that's a problem we have among deacons.

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Sometimes that's a problem we have in the congregation. And someone said, "Well, you didn't concern me about this." And we are so wrapped up in ourselves and so concerned about promoting ourselves that we do not take the way of meekness, which is so essential for being able to conquer.

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So, you know, I must be free. But I must somehow submit myself to His will, that I must somehow be submissive to the divine authority in order for me to really be meek.

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I must increase and he must increase, which means that the natural order of things, the way I naturally am, is when you tell me off, I tell you off. That's the way most of us are, naturally. We're just born that way.

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So, you see, we're just not meet by nature. We are naturally given to pride. Dante says that pride is the most, is his most besetting sin, and this is true of the human family, that we are beset by the deadly sin of pride.

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We just are not meet by nature. Moses was not meet by nature, and yet Moses is called a man who is meet. He wasn't meet by nature. Look at Moses as we see him with the pride of race.

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When an Egyptian is punishing an Israelite, Moses takes matters into his own hands, and he slays the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. He's not leaped by nature. When he's leading the children of Israel, and they become involved in idol worship,

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and he comes down from the mountain with the tablets of the law in his hand, Moses cast them down. He's angry! He's just not leaped by nature, but yet somehow in the course of time, time Moses in fellowship with God, his nature changes and he becomes regarded as one who is

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Paul was not meek by nature, he was one who persecuted the church. He was riding on a horse of pride, he was on his way to Damascus to put an end to the Christian He wasn't, he was lifted up in his own pride. It is later that he says,

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"It's not I, but Christ in me." The arrogance has its own misery. Oh, to be arrogant, to be haughty, to be lifted up in pride.

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Pride goeth before destruction. For the spirit before fall be lifted up in pride. You know, arrogance is something that has its built-in misery. Sort of like being sung by a honeybee.

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I'm strung by a honeybee. Now the thing hurts. Our arrogance can hurt someone else. But it hurts us more.

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Because being strung by that honeybee, while the sting of the bee hurts me, the thing kills the bee. So our arrogance is more detrimental to ourselves. Meekness is not weakness.

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Meekness is gentleness. Gentleness. I've heard men say, "Don't call me a gentleman." Be insulted. Don't call me a gentleman.

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To be gentle. To have gentle manners. To be kind. Some feel that to be manly is to be coarse, to be crude, to be wild, like a caveman. But to be gentle is to be meek.

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Meekness involves yielding, surrendering oneself, yielding to that divine power, being obedient to God's way, astute to conquer. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. For you see, meekness is not only gentleness and surrendering of self.

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Meekness is teaming. no longer wild, somehow one is tamed so that one is easily led and is submissive to the will of God. That's really what it means to be meek. To stoop to conquer, for you see, the kind of spirit that I'm talking about

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It's not something any one of us has ordinarily. It's not, it just doesn't come naturally with us. Meekness is not something that is man-made. Meekness is something that is God-given.

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So in order to really be meek, one has to be born again. To really be born again. the kind of relationship, the kind of inner spirit I'm talking about, you just don't have it just because you talk about it.

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But it's something that you know that you have your rights, you know that all the time, but somehow the spirit of God within you causes you to submit to God's will and to say, "Well, God will take care of it." Not because you're afraid. Now, meekness isn't a sign of cowardice. It's not that. It takes a whole lot of courage to be meek. A whole lot of courage to be meek.

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I think of using the words "courageous meekness." Courageous meekness. A whole lot of courage. It takes a whole lot of courage to sit at a lunch counter and be denied food and to have someone to take a live cigarette and put it next to you and burn you and you just sit there.

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That's a sign of meekness. You don't fight back. It takes a whole lot of courage to have dogs let loose on you and fire hoses on you and you still walk empty. That's a courage. That's not a sign of cowardice. That's a sign of strength. And so often when somebody blows up and does something wrong and somebody says, "Well, you know, he didn't say anything," or "She didn't say anything," it's not because you're afraid.

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It's because somehow there is that spirit of weakness and amicness that is God-given, blessed are the meek. For he that exalts himself shall be abased, but he that humbles himself shall be exalted. So Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek." Blessed are those who stoop in order to conquer.

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For those who stoop shall conquer. That's what he says. Take my yoke. Take my yoke upon thee, and learn of me.

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For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Be meek and lowly, he also says in that passage. For I am meek and lowly. Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly.

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That if we would be like Jesus, if we would be disciples, if we would follow in the way of the cross, it is to take upon us the yoke of Jesus Christ! And there we are possessed with sweetness. For he says here, "The meek shall inherit the earth."

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Listen, "The meek shall inherit the earth." Not the haughty, not the proud, but the meek shall inherit. Not going out taking it with guns, but the meek shall inherit the earth. Now this possession of meekness isn't something that you can put on and put off at will.

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It's not like property that can be just transferred around, sold here one day, another place another day. It says, "The meat shall inherit the earth." In other words, it is a possession. You shall possess the land. It is a possession that no one can take away from you.

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Meet me. Nobody can take that. They may take your physical life, but it is a kind of inner security. It is a kind of abiding relationship that nobody can take from you, no matter what they do.

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Somehow, that relationship of meekness remains. That's what Jesus is saying. It's inherited. It's a heritage that God gives. It's something that nobody can take from you because you are that.

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Do the conquer. Well, Jesus sets the example for us. I see him with his disciples. And the disciples are all very haughty.

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They're lifted up in pride. Each one is thinking about who's going to have first place. Who's going to be number one in the kingdom. That's what's in their mind.

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That's what's on their heart. how they can get ahead quick, how one can outshine the other. That's the way it is in our world today. That Jesus knows that.

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And I see him as he takes a towel, and as he takes a bowl of water, and he goes, he gets on his knees, and he goes to watch his disciples speak. He who is Lord of all, He who is the greatest, He who is the example for all of us to follow, gets down on his knees and washes their feet.

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He soothes them. Peter says, "Oh no, Lord, don't wash my feet." But as Jesus said, "If I wash not your feet, if you have no pardon, Meekness. Meekness bending low, bending somehow in the name of God.

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Meekness thrusting in him to somehow those who sin, those who stoop to somehow conquer. That's the way of the cross. That's the way. That's the only way to win. Meekness is the way, living humbly, being possessed by humility, somehow stooping, somehow embracing God's will, God's way.

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Meekness is the way. That's the way we somehow make it. Find ourselves on our knees clinging to the cross. It's an old, rugged cross.

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The burden is heavy, but that burden somehow drives us to our knees. And as we are driven to our knees, somehow we are lifted beyond ourselves. Lifted beyond ourselves to being a new person. Lifted to higher heights, trusting in the Lord.

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We begin to learn so much more about him because we have traveled away in Jesus. And that's why Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, for these are they who stoop to conquer." Put away where you travel. The call comes today

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to take upon ourselves the yoke of Christ. He says to us,

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"I am meek and lowly of heart." To do that is to cling to the old rugged cross, and as we sing hymn night... [BLANK_AUDIO]