Last Thursday night, my father-in-law and I were stuck on I-94 in Chicago. It was awful. We’ve been taking courses together at Trinity International University. But our classes don’t get out until after 4:30 PM each night. That's about the same time rush hour is hitting its peak. It wouldn’t be a big deal if we were taking classes on the south side of Chicago. But Trinity is located about twenty to thirty miles north of O’Hare International Airport, off I-94. I-94 is one of those places where making eye contact with another driver revokes your rightaway and where using a turn signal warns drivers to speed up and to not let you merge into their lanes.
And so, last Thursday night I-94 was this huge parking lot. And if you can imagine the situation being any more grave than it was, Lara’s dad was behind the wheel. You are not going to find a finer man than Lara’s dad. But Don is an anxious driver, and in order to cope with the stress, Don gobbles on Wheat Thins and fruit bars from a sack hidden behind his seat.
And so as he reaches behind his seat with his left hand, he simultaneously juggles a bottle of water in his right hand, while using his knees to control the steering wheel. And he does all this while remaining inches from the bumper of the car in front of us and also while looking in the rear view mirror. It would be great entertainment if he were part of a circus act, but we're on I-94, and my life is flashing before my very eyes. I do my best to practice mental patience, but at the end of the night I’m a mental patient. I’m kidding. Don’t tattle on me.
When you sit in rush hour traffic for very long, you begin thinking you can do better. The car in the left lane has moved forward three paces. The car to the right has moved forward ten paces. "Why are those others lanes moving, but our lane is not moving?" And so what do we do? We jump into the right lane. And the moment we jump into the right lane, the right lane comes to a screeching halt! Meanwhile, the traffic in the middle lane that we just exited surges forward. And so what do we do? We switch back to the middle lane. And the moment we switch back, the right lane gets on the gas. Ten cars, thirty cars, sixty cars all pass us. Our net gain was minus 45 places.
Rush hour is a metaphor for life.
Have you ever noticed that when you’re impatient you never get ahead, but actually lose ground? In the middle lane, we were behind this semi-trailer. But when we started jockeying for position, that semi ended up miles and miles ahead of us! We should have just stayed put. We can learn an awful lot about life from rush hour, and no, I am not talking Rush Limbaugh. Rush hour is a metaphor for life.
In rush hour it is every windshield and bumper for itself. In rush hour there is one goal; to push forward and outmaneuver others at all costs. In rush hour there is very little regard for other people. If anything, people are obstacles, inconveniences, nuisances, or competition. "Honk, honk. Get out of my way. What are you doing? Get off your cell phone and drive. Stop riding your brakes. Move over!" In rush hour there is no enjoying the scenery and smelling the flowers. You're just passing through, and the quicker the better. It's the destination that matters, not the journey. Friends, that is the exact philosophy that our world lives by, and many Christians as well!
Jesus' ministry must have caused quite a commotion.
In preparation for this sermon I was looking over Matthew 4:23-25 again. Matthew 4:23-25 (NIV) says, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people were brought to him who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him."
Imagine the mad rush that would occur if anything remotely similar happened today. Yesterday, Sony’s Playstation 3 made its debut in Tokyo, Japan. Thousands of people rushed stores. Workers shouted at the masses through megaphones, warning people that sales would stop if anyone got injured from all the shoving and pushing. All that chaos was over a video game. What if a hospital developed a miracle cure and opened its doors to the general public? Or imagine if a clinic developed a pill that cured depression, ADD, and thousands of other physical problems?
You can bet that people put Jesus in their crosshairs and pursued him and made demands of him when they got wind of what he could do for them. You can bet that people were lining up early, budging in line, and stepping on top of each other doing whatever it took to get to the front of the line where Jesus was doing his thing. That’s human nature. That’s how we are. That’s our self-centered mindset. None of us are exempt. Rush, rush, rush.
Quick Feet- Brash
If we were to give a name to this spiritual ailment, we might call it Quick Feet. We are always in a rush. We're always on our way to something else. Jesus is our quick fix. Jesus is the one who can get us back on our way. "Hurry up, Jesus. Fix me up. Gotta get back to work. Gotta get back to school. I've got games to play, got people to see, got things to do. I've got a career, got family matters, got opportunities. Jesus, hurry up and use your magic powers and make me well now!"
But quite unexpectedly, perhaps to the crowd’s disappointment, Jesus sat down on a mountainside. See Matthew 5:1-2. This was not quite the pace the crowd was hoping for. The crowd would have had the same reaction to Jesus that you have when after spending hours in a traffic jam, you happen across a construction site where workers are sitting around taking a break. "Get up! Get back to work! Stop talking. Fix this mess! We’ve been traveling for days. You’re our only hope."
Religious assumptions about blessing.
You’ll see this in your outline. The world believes that good things come to those who push forward and dominate others. Life’s motto is, "Survival of the fittest!" How many times in the course of a week do you find yourself pushing forward? Pushing in front of others? Pushing in front of God? Rushing around?
We try to forge ahead in anger. We try to forge ahead by compromising truth and righteousness. We try to forge ahead by amassing debts that we cannot repay. We worry. We fret. We manipulate. We conspire. We exploit. We step on people. We sin. We do evil. Friends, this is how the world operates. Success at great cost. And we get caught up in it. But Jesus wants nothing to do with that. He sits down and takes a relaxing breath.
In Mark 8:34-38 (NIV) Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Here’s the point. You can have every single thing your heart rushes after, but not have the one thing that will truly satisfy your soul for eternity. You can have that home, that career, that promotion, that title, that trophy, that accomplishment, that degree, that toy, that trinket, that bank balance, that man, that woman, that family, or whatever. But in your rush to inherit all the world provides, you’ll forfeit everything of value. You'll forfeit people you love, people God loves, and even your own soul.
Just sit down for a moment. Good, you've got that part down pat. What comes next after you reach your destination? And what’s next after that, and after that, and after that? Do we spend our lives just rushing around or do we slow it down and listen to Jesus? Jesus absolutely stuns the crowds with these words in Matthew 5:5 (NIV). "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."
An unlikely candidate for blessing- the meek.
Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the humble and gentle. Blessed are the courteous, the self-controlled, the sensitive, the patient, and the kind. Blessed are those who empty themselves, who refuse to ride roughshod over others, who refuse to trample on other’s rights, who refuse to use others as stepping stones or as a means to their ends. Blessed are those who yield to others, who slow down and enjoy the scenery, and who stop and smell the flowers. Blessed are those who pause to take in the trillions of blessings already surrounding them every moment of every day.
One thing is for certain. We don’t find Christ in the rush of life. We don’t find Christ by being tough, overbearing, strong, powerful, mighty, demanding, selfish, or self-centered! We don’t find Christ by grabbing, grasping, shoving, budging and chasing and worrying and being brash. Jesus went up on a mountain and sat down. "Blessed are the meek." In Christ’s kingdom, good things come to the humble and gentle.
The blessing comes to the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
We assume we can get ahead by jockeying and scurrying about. But in our rush to grab and grasp, we can lose our souls. And that is just plain foolish. Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." All that rushing about leads nowhere. You're not any happier after exerting all that energy and taxing all those relationships around you than when you first began.
Do you want to get ahead? Do you really want to inherit the earth? Do you really want to taste the deepest blessings of God’s kingdom? Let go. Trust Christ. There are several verses there in your bulletin from Psalm 37 that I want you to meditate on this week.You can read them in detail later. But the bottom line of these scriptures is that everything already belongs to those who are in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3 (NIV) says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." I want to finish with Psalm 37. In these scriptures, notice how the wicked grab and grasp, but the meek inherit the earth.
Psalm 37 (NIV)
"Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun."
"Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret— it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land. A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found. But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace."
"The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming. The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. But their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken. Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked; for the power of the wicked will be broken, but the LORD upholds the righteous."
"The days of the blameless are known to the LORD, and their inheritance will endure forever. In times of disaster they will not wither; in days of famine they will enjoy plenty. But the wicked will perish: The LORD’s enemies will be like the beauty of the fields, they will vanish— vanish like smoke. The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously; those the LORD blesses will inherit the land, but those he curses will be cut off."
"If the LORD delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand. I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be blessed. Turn from evil and do good; then you will dwell in the land forever. For the LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. They will be protected forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off; the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever."
"The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just. The law of his God is in his heart; his feet do not slip. The wicked lie in wait for the righteous, seeking their very lives; but the LORD will not leave them in their power or let them be condemned when brought to trial. Wait for the LORD and keep his way. He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it."
"I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil, but he soon passed away and was no more; though I looked for him, he could not be found. Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for the man of peace. But all sinners will be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off. The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; he is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him."