The Leaven that Transforms the World

I appreciate the special music. And I'll say what I normally say, I could do that. In a million years. It might take me a while, but I could do it. And you could do it, too. You know, get enough time, the evolutionists say anything is possible. But I always feel humbled when I see people get up and sing and play guitars and instruments. And it seems like they're getting younger and younger as well. Up in Denver, they have a little sort of an orchestra of all kinds of instruments. I don't know how many were on stage, but I think there were like ten on stage in that small congregation up there. But they accompany the singing. So it's really, really great. We appreciate the sacrifice and hope more will sacrifice, in fact, and do special music. I think that that's a way that we can serve that will really inspire and help other people themselves to be encouraged to maybe try it themselves to do that. The more courageous we are, the more courageous others will be. The more bold we are, the more bold other people will be.

You ever been driving along on a freeway and you're looking for something and you're going so fast, you miss it. And it goes by so quickly to say, now, what did I just see? You know, I know sometimes I've been on the freeway and I've been going so fast, I miss the sign. Maybe a turn off to somebody I was going to go visit with. And, you know, sometimes you drive maybe down the road 10 miles and say, well, maybe that was the sign I was looking for.

Or sometimes you have to back up and you have to look at the sign. Yeah, this is the turn off. This is where we go. This is the way we go. You know, in a way, it can be that way in our lives as well. We're going along so fast that we do live in a fast-paced society. It's incredible how fast things are moving in this age, this day that we're living in.

Where knowledge is increasing on a monthly basis, not on an every three-year basis or four-year basis, but on a monthly basis, that things are changing so rapidly. Now, we just went by in the stream of life, the days of unleavened bread. And sometimes you can miss the signs. We can miss the signs of even something as sacred as the keeping of the days of unleavened bread.

And, you know, I noticed that Mr. McKee had mentioned about the conference that this was the takeaway. This is the takeaway. Very often in conferences, you know, maybe the leader will get up and say, well, what is the takeaway from this conference that we're having? Well, brethren, what did you take away from the days of unleavened bread?

Let's back the truck up a little bit. Beep, beep, beep, beep, as the truck sound backs up and ask the question, what did you take away from the feast of unleavened bread? You know, before we get down the road too far, already unleavened bread is in the rear view mirror, right? We could still see it back there. It's not that far back. And what you took away from the days of unleavened bread, will it impact you all year round in what you do? You know, every year we put out leavening for seven days. And, you know, we hit it hard, don't we?

Leavening depicts sin, and leavening spreads fast. We, of course, all know what is taught. But think about this. If you only focus on the fact that seven days of the year leavening depicts sin, what about the other days of the year? The other 300-something days that are down the road ahead of us. If we only focus on those seven days that sin, you know, is depicted by leavening, the impact on it is sharply limited upon us. I think we all know, brethren, that oftentimes in God's Word, and when we see what God commands us to do, and you find this true every time, what God is saying is pointing to a greater and a bigger concept for us to grasp, to see.

And, you know, brethren, God often points us to bigger concepts which will lead not to just you being changed and me being changed, but this entire world is going to be changed.

This entire world is going to be impactive in the future. So, brethren, now that we're past the days of unleavened bread, and we're looking at, in the rearview mirror, our life, what does leavening symbolize for the rest of the year? What does it symbolize for the rest of the year? You know, when that sun went down on the seventh day, it ceased to represent sin. You know, certainly the analogy is certainly true, but for us, if we ate leavening during the days of unleavened bread, it would have been sin, right?

For us to do it. You know, Christ gave parables, striking parables about the kingdom of God. And you know the story over here in Matthew chapter 13. I'm not going to tell the story of the parable of the sower, how a sower went out and he sowed the seed.

You can read that later on. And then he talked about the parable, the wheat and the tares, and how the wheat was planted and the offender, of course representative of the devil, comes in and plants tares. And they're allowed to grow up, as it says in the Bible. And then, let's notice in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus gave this parable. It says another parable, verse 31, chapter 13 of Matthew. He put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and he sowed in his field. And Jesus said, which indeed is the least of all seeds.

It's just a tiny, tiny seed. But when it's grown, it's greater than the herbs, and becomes a tree, so that birds of the air come and nest in its branches. And, you know, so here this little, tiny thing becomes something large, that even birds are able to roost in. But let's notice the next one, verse 33. Another parable he spoke.

His mind was, of course, on the kingdom of God. But he spoke to them, The king of God is like leaven. It's like leaven. Now, wait a minute. Leaven's a bad thing here, right? No, it's not a bad thing in this case. But the king of God is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures a meal, till it was all leavened.

So here Christ compared this to the kingdom of God. And, you know, this figure that is planting the leaven in the dough is interesting. It's not a man, it's a woman here. It is putting the leavening in this dough. Now, that's quite interesting. What does that mean? And oftentimes, of course, parables have meanings, have understandings that we need to grasp. We know during the days of Unleavened Bread, Unleavened Bread teaches that leaven is a symbol of sin.

And what does it do? Well, in reality, what it does, it corrupts the whole dough. If you put it and inject it into the dough, it corrupts the whole thing. It takes it over. It's like we had a plant one time that my wife and I planted in the back flower bed up in northern California when we lived in Britwood. And you know what? That plant took over the flower bed. It's like it squeezed out everything. I mean, there were little bulbs all through the soil, and you dig it through, and it's all like... it's like a plague. It was like a plague. It's a very beautiful plant, but it took over the whole flower bed.

Well, leaven is that way. It just takes over. It takes over everything. And we, of course, learned the impact of leaven and its relationship to sin in our lives. Jesus warned the disciples to beware. He said of the leaven of the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Because wrong examples, wrong examples, corrupt us eventually.

If we allow them to begin to enter into our lives, they will corrupt us. You know, it's like you put one bad apple next to a good apple, and what happens? It becomes a bad apple pretty soon. And so you try to cull the bad apples out of a basket so that you can preserve the remainder of the apples. But let's go over to Matthew 16. Matthew 16. And notice that Jesus talked about, again, the corrupting influence of the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the other different sects then of the Jews that had a bad influence upon people, because they were, of course, oftentimes, not what they purported to be.

But in Matthew 16, let's notice down here in verse 5, Matthew 16 and verse 5 begin here. It says, when the disciples had come to the other side, and it says, forgotten to take bread, then Jesus said to them, take heed, beware of the leavens of Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Beware of it. And of course, the disciples didn't even know this sort of came out of the blue for them. And they were never much clued in anyway. They were mainly thinking about food. They didn't have any bread, and they were out here where they would need it. They had a reason among themselves, saying, is it because we took no bread? But Jesus, being aware of it, verse 8 here, says to them, O you of little faith. Interesting. He says, O you of little faith, because they didn't know what he was talking about. O you of little understanding. Why do you reason among yourselves?

Because you have brought no bread. Do you not understand? Or remember that I gave the five loaves and the five thousand and all that. He said, and how many baskets do you take up? And he says, how is it you do not understand? I did not speak to you concerning bread. I wasn't talking about bread at all. But to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine, the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Now, sometimes we can be so open-minded, and I'm sure you've heard this phrase many, many times, your brains could fall out. You can be so open-minded pretty soon, you could be so loosey-goosey, as they say, that you'd accept anything. And you're corrupted when it comes to that particular point. What do you know when you become corrupted by wrong ideas?

So Christ was saying, beware of the false ideas of the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was warning about it. They taught, in fact, Jesus was very angry. And he says, you worship me. And he says, you teach the traditions of men as commandments, and you negate the law. You negate what has been commanded because of your traditions. So, brethren, we have to be very, very careful of false ideas when they began to circulate, and they're always circulating. It was interesting to me that when we began back in 1995 with the United Church of God, we tried to come up with a list of doctrines.

And interestingly, all of the things that Mr. Armstrong listed, and back in the days when it was the radio Church of God, back in those years, and the doctrines were the same, that what was then and what, in fact, happened in 1995. And interestingly, too, when we looked into different things that were issues, they were issues then, and after 1995, they were issues again.

Same old, same old. Satan is always active, brethren. Circling, wrong ideas, false ideas. Jesus said this. He warned, number one, beware of ideas, false ideas. They are not harmless. And I tell you, there's a lot of false ideas in the world, and all of us know, of course, the LGBT, and there's so many letters that everybody's adding to it, you know, anymore. In fact, it's beyond me now. I didn't even try to keep up with that kind of stuff. How many have been added to it? But we're living in a world that has, again, been corrupted. Like the leavening has taken over the dough, as it were. And everything is corrupted.

I mean, everything is corrupted in the world in so many, many ways. And we're not just being, you know, somehow over-dramatic about it. That's a reality. That's the fact. That's the way it is in the world. And the world out there is what, you know, is the reality that we see day by day. Now, Jesus warned of another thing to watch. And he compared it to this leavening. Let's go to Luke 12. Luke 12 over here.

Just one verse. Just one verse. Verse 1. It says, in the meantime, it says, When an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples, first of all, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And now He identifies what that leaven pictured, which is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. Being a hypocrite. And this is something, of course, we should all know is, Is someone acting under false pretense?

Someone saying that they are what they... And the reality is, they're not what they say they are. We found, in fact, back in the 90s, and a lot of people were not what they said they were. And that's why it was so easy to jettison the truth. To just throw it right out the window. So for some, it happened so quickly, it made you a heads-webb. People you really thought you had confidence in them that they would never reject the truth.

Well, they did. You've got to wonder what was going on inside of here. Knowing the truth has been the most fantastic thing I have ever known in my whole life. And I will tell you, if I have anything to do with it in my life, and I pray I always do, I will never reject the truth. I pray I have the courage, and I pray God's help, that that would always be so. But Christ said, beware of the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees, the people acting under false pretense.

So these two things He warned His disciples about. Watch out for the doctrine. And a doctrine basically just means teaching. That word in the Greek is just teaching. What are we taught? So somebody comes, speaks, and they speak in flowery language. And what they're saying is appealing, but if it's different from the truth, you better— your antennae better go up, and you better hold on to those things that you know to be true.

Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 5 over here. We, no doubt, somebody did on the last day of Unleavened Bread. But I want to point out here again how corruption works, how leavening corrupts, and how it works, and it works very quickly. But here in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 1, notice here.

Here Paul writes in this letter, he says, It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. Such sexual immorality is not even named among the Gentiles.

That a man should have his father's wife. Talk about perversion. But you have to remember that this is written to Corinth. Corinth was, in fact, you might say the New York City of that day, or the San Francisco, probably most any city anymore, about like this, isn't it? But the word Corinthianized, by the way, meant to prostitute. If somebody was, it would be like going to New York, and if you want to be corrupted, go to New York. You'll be corrupted. Just by being in New York, you're surrounded by the swill of what is there. Or go to San Francisco. You want to be corrupted. Or go to any other big city, for that matter. But notice here, going on, what he says, and you're puffed up. You're puffed up. So here they were able to see somebody who was committing a sin, committing adultery, at least fornication. We don't know what the circumstance was here. But he was sinning, and it was open. And these people were so big-minded, and Paul says, you're puffed up. They were so big-minded that they could rise above that. Oh, it didn't bother me. You know, who eats his own? Well, that's not the way Paul felt about it. He says, you're puffed up, but you should be crying for what's going on in your midst. You should be crying about it. You should be mourning about it. And that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. And indeed, as absent of the body, but president of the spirit, have all rejoiced as though I were there. Him who has done so this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such an one to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Maybe Paul was saying here that maybe this person could be in the second resurrection, you know, if he got his mind right. But, you know, he goes on to talk, and we know how this ties in to the, you know, Passover and the days of unleavened bread. But let's go down here to verse 7. Therefore purge out, he says, this old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are truly are unleavened. You know, they cleaned out the leavening, so they were unleavened. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, so we could be unleavened.

He says, therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness. But here's what I want you to notice, brethren, here. You remember Jesus Christ said, he said, beware of the leaven, of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees. Beware. And what was the first thing? Beware of the teaching. What was the second thing? Beware of the hypocrisy. So Paul here, in verse 8, says, let's keep the feast not with that old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity. In other words, no hypocrisy. Be true and blue. Be right.

Be a person who is righteous. And truth. Truth.

Make sure the teaching is truth. Same thing that Christ was talking about. The unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. That all of us, again, need to be aware of that. We need to base our lives on those two principles. Sincerity and truth. Without that hypocrisy and staying away from false doctrine. You know, this whole world, brethren, has been corrupted. Leaven with rebellion against God, beginning with the devil. It's filled with hatred, jealousy, lust, and greed.

And it is corrupted by those who want to destroy the family. And, you know, there are actually people out there that want to destroy the family. The American family, or any family for that matter, want to tear down the husband's role in a family, wants to turn on its head the roles of people in marriage upside down.

I mean, there are wicked people out there that are plotting these things against people in this country. Really is going on. It's hard to believe that there are people that are just that wicked, but there are people that are wicked. Don't want to define a family as a husband and a wife and children. Wants to define a family as he and he and whatever you want to do, or she and she, or she and it, or whatever, or two it's, I guess. You know, pretty soon you never know. Somebody might marry an animal and say, well, you know, that goat is the mother. This is the kind of world, again, we're living in. It's corrupted and it's getting worse and worse. They make good evil and evil good. They want to make everything, again, the exact opposite. And this is what they're striving to do. You know, I was thinking about the, you know, what does Satan rule over in this world? What does he rule over? Well, you know, you and I have to look at the world as it is right now, the society that we live in. Satan rules over lying. He's the author of lying. So all of the duplicitous, you know, lying that goes on in the world, he's the author of that. He rules over that. He majors in it. He rules over death. He brought about death, the first two humans. When they followed his lead, God says, you're going to die, and everybody has been dying since. He rules over pain in the world. He rules over suffering and violence and war and aggravating diseases of the body and the mind. He rules over famine. The thousands upon thousands, and perhaps millions who have started to death in the world, he rules over that. He rules over poverty, abject poverty. He rules over futility. It's like pushing a rock up the hill and rolling back down, you've got to push it back up the hill. He likes people doing that all their life until the day that they bite the dust and they die. That's what Satan rules over, brethren. He rules over suffering and temporary existence. He wants to shorten our lives even more than they are right now. We're like a tree that encumbers the ground. He would like to cut down. So these are the things that Satan rules over. God rules the entire universe, brethren. He rules the entire universe. He rules over truth and justice. He rules over abundant happiness in people's lives, giving people joy. He rules over love and family. He rules over mom and dad and little children. He rules over prosperity for everyone. He rules over peace of mind and no war. And he rules over an endless future. That is the God you serve.

And unfortunately, Satan, though, is the author of this world. He's the God of this world, as it says in 2 Corinthians 4.4. We want God ruling the universe, don't we? If I could say, can I have an amen with that? I would ask that, but we don't do that in the church. But I think you'd all say, amen. We want that. We desire that.

But if loveting only symbolizes sin, it would be a little bit discouraging, because I look in the world, and we're losing, brethren. We're being closed in, in fact, in the church. The world is closing in on us, and it's impacting us more and more. And you've got to guard the door of your mind more steadfastly, in fact, if you're going to survive.

Satan is immensely successful right now. Very successful. And, unfortunately, entirely too successful in our lives. He's impacted us. And he's getting at us. And, again, we've really got to be active about guarding the door of our mind.

Jesus gave us, though, the concept of leavening, and how leavening can symbolize what is good and what is righteous. It can work the same way. It can work the other way around. You know, Jesus Christ said, the King of God is like a woman hid in three measures of bill till the hole was leavened.

So it was taken over. Now, who do you think that woman symbolized in that parable? Who's the woman? Well, the only woman I know of in the Bible is the church. And, you know, who is the church then? You're the church. You and I are the church, the body of Christ. And, well, who is... what is the leavening? What is the leavening? The leavening is righteousness. It's God's way of life here that Jesus Christ is talking about. She puts this leavening in this dough, and it overtakes the dough. And Jesus Christ came preaching the gospel of the King of God, and that's been our job ever since in the church, to preach the hope of the gospel of the King of God, to spread the truth, and to spread righteousness throughout the world, so it takes over.

And eventually it will. What are the three measures of meal here? What possibly could that depict? Now, we have to speculate on that. But it might be, rather than the three epics of time since Adam and Eve. You know, we have the time between Adam and Noah, the world that was, and then, of course, we have the world that took place after Noah, up to the time of Christ. And then, of course, we have a change about where God's way of life is promulgated in the world. But prior to that, only a few were talking about those things.

And then we have the great epic of the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. So those three periods, the time prior to the flood, the time after the flood, and the time of the world tomorrow, or the millennial reign of Christ, and it started very small. And we may look at ourselves and think, well, we're very small. Actually, it started smaller than that. It started with people like Noah.

It started with others that were righteous prior to the flood. And it began, again, after the flood with, of course, Noah and Abraham and Moses and all of the patriarchs of God. And it continues with us. And when Jesus Christ returns, brethren, we're going to be that leavening, as it were, that is going to be put in the world, which is considered, again, this big piece of dough that's going to take it over. It's going to take it over. The truth of the gospel is going to be spread throughout the entire world by the church.

That's what our job is now, to begin to do that. But it first begins with us. So we've got to get it right, brethren. And then when Jesus Christ returns, we're going to be that lump of dough which will leaven the whole world with righteousness. And no part of the kingdom, brethren, is going to be untouched by this, what I call, leaven of righteousness.

It's going to be brave the entire world. The prophets say that the law is going to go out of Jerusalem. You and I are going to have that role and responsibility of taking the gospel to the world. I can only see some interesting times coming for all of us for when that time occurs. You may go into a city and you're going to say, I'm coming from the king sitting down here in Jerusalem. And he says, you folks are going to have to start obeying the law. And they're going to probably laugh at us.

And you know, they may very well tar and federal us and maybe think that they've killed us and take us out and dump us outside the city. And you and I may have to march back in, get cleaned up, march back in and give them the same message.

It's like Moses. When Moses was striving to get Israel out of Egypt, he had to go numerous times to the Pharaoh and he wouldn't let him go. And so we may have to do that in the future. But we're going to carry the truth, the gospel, the kingdom of God to the world, brethren. And you know, we're going to win. We're going to be a people that are going to be highly successful.

We're going to be more successful than the devil is because we're going to drive him out of business. He's going to be thrown at an outer darkness when his final finally said and done, bound through the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. And God's way will cover the entire world and every person will have the hope of it, brethren, then.

Now, I've heard it said this way, that man's way leads to a hopeless end. And God's way leads to an endless hope. We're going to have that chance to have that endless hope ahead of us. Now, what will the world be like, rather than them? You know, after John was put in prison, Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. In a Sermon on the Mount, he gave the core ingredients of the King of God. And you know what they're called? Often, I've heard it referred to this way in the Sermon on the Mount, these so-called, these attitudes. All of us know them as bi-attitudes, bi-attitudes from the Latin word biatus, which means blessed. You know, I like to call these bi-attitudes, you know, maybe I'm too simplistic in my thinking, I like to call them beautiful attitudes. Beautiful attitudes. You ever seen anybody that has a great attitude? You know, has a yes-lord attitude? Show me what I'm supposed to do? Well, these are yes-lord attitudes, or beautiful attitudes that Jesus said that we should have. And these represent the core of what the kingdom of God is going to be like in the world tomorrow, when righteousness pervades everything. Let's go to Matthew 5 over here. Matthew 5, I think all of us know again these verses here. I'm just going to touch on each of them a little bit here. But here in Matthew 5, it says in verse 1, And seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and his voice would of course carry a whole lot better to this great multitude that was there. And when he had seated him, his disciples came to him, and then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Here he said, blessed are the poor in spirit. Again, the word blessed means happy. Happy. It means fortunate. Fortunate? In the internal sense, you know, that you were cheered by it, blessed by these things. Luke merely says, blessed are the poor. Jesus Christ preached the gospel to the poor, we're told in the Bible. In other words, he preached the gospel to those who were poor in the things of this life. You know, those that God has called through the ages, brethren, have been mostly poor people. I've told you this before. When I went to church the first time in Arkansas, that's where I went to church the first time in my life, in a little church hall, look at it in Jenny Lynn, Arkansas. You know, after Jenny Lynn, the singer, it was an old broken-down schoolhouse where the church was meeting. There were maybe 150 people that were there at that time. But in the parking lot were all these jalopies, you know, all of these cars that were put together by baling, wiring, chewing gum, basically. A lot of poor people that God had called. Now, believe me, they didn't remain that way. When God called them, God could begin to bless them. But because they were poor in spirit, they were ready to hear the truth. And they heard it, and they responded to the truth. So Christ was talking again to those who were poor in the things of this life and more likely to be humble, and more likely to be receptive to the good news of a better world that was coming, the good news of the kingdom of God.

And again, most of us probably fit into that category, don't we? And that's why we listened. That was a part of the reason we listened to what was being said. We wanted a better life. It's like I remember one of my friends was talking about when he was a little boy. A minister came over, visited with his mother, and he wasn't very old. And he heard the minister say that in the world tomorrow, you know, God is calling us to be kings and priests.

And he said he remembered saying to the minister, you know, I would like to be a king.

And he became a minister in the church.

But it impacted his life. Well, God has called us, brethren, though we have humble beginnings to much greater things. So Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You have that receptivity to the truth. Yours is the kingdom of heaven. If you're humble to see your sin, brethren, then we can be forgiven of those sins. And if we are humble to see them, then we're teachable. We're moldable in the hands of God. If so, if we have that attitude, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Or as Luke says, theirs is the kingdom of God. They're going to be in the kingdom. Let's notice verse 4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The word mourn in the Greek here means to wail or to grieve. Sometimes life, brethren, can be pretty hard, pretty difficult. And some can feel it's like the old Hee-haw song, if you remember it many, many years ago. If I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Sometimes we felt that way, that we've been slammed from every side, so to speak. You know, there are really two reasons why people mourn. One is as a result of affliction or loss of a loved one. And all of us have been to that in one degree or another in our lives, not only coming from humble backgrounds, but having situations where we've lost a loved one, we've had suffering or affliction in our family. Another reason which a person mourns is a deep awareness of the seriousness of one's sins. We come to the realization that our lives have not been what they should have been. And we come to the realization we have got to change. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. And we've got to make those changes. We've got to make the commitment, as all of us did when we were baptized. We came to realize that. We came to see that as God's people. But Jesus said again, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And so God, when we mourn because of what we were going through, in our lives God sent forth His Spirit, began to work with us and began to transform us. To give us hope. To give us light. To give us, again, the truth. Eventually, led to the truth. It started small, but it did not end that way. We know the Holy Spirit is for that very purpose. No, the Greek word, by the way, for a comforter is in fact, paracleo. Paraculeo. It's a verb meaning the act of comforting. But the word paracletos is a Greek noun. It's a Greek noun. God does encourage us, brethren, yet uplifts us through His Spirit. He comforts us. It's the act of comforting us, helping us. You ever been there in your life where you were just down and out? You didn't know if you were going to make it one day to another? And you said, God, God help me! Help me! It was like somebody going down for the last time about ready to drown. And God throws a lifeline to us to save us by the power of the Spirit. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted. You go through a trial in your life, God's going to help you along the way. Let's notice verse 5 here. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This is not just another word for humility. Sometimes people think that this word meek just means blessed are humble. That's not what Christ is talking about. We, in fact, have talked about humility already. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, humble, willing to listen.

Interestingly, this is what Albert Barnes' note says about this word meek. Meekness is patience and the reception of injuries. You're going through a trial, you're patient. You're patient and you hold at end and you rely on God.

And he goes on to say here, it is neither meanness, in other words, reacted in kind, nor a surrender of our rights, nor cowardice, but it is the opposite of sudden anger, a malice of long-harboard vengeance. Sometimes people just burst forth with words that are angry, that want to hurt other people.

Well, if we're meek, we don't do that. We don't do that. No, God wants us to be meek. Blessed are the meek. They're the ones who are going to inherit the earth. Meekness, brethren, I've heard it put this way, is using strength, power, using strength and power in a humble way, being very humble about it. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Who was considered to be, by the way, one of the most humble people in the Old Testament? Moses, right? I heard Moses, I think, out there. Remember when Miriam and Aaron were basically trying to tell Moses, we should have as much authority as you do? Remember that example? And how they were probably in all honesty, they were probably very critical of Moses. Not that Moses hadn't been through enough already with some of the other elders of Israel who rebelled. But Miriam and Aaron rebelled. And Moses, though, was very humble. He was a man that could have made decisions. He could have lashed out. But Moses' approach, brother, every time, every time, not just in this case, but every time, was one of humility. There was a time when God was going to wipe out Israel. He said, I'll wipe them out and I'll start through you, Moses. What did Moses say? He said, but Lord, what will people say about you? What will the world say? You brought these people out there and you couldn't handle them and you put them all to death. He was a meek man. He had tremendous power. You know, brethren, all of us have the power to do things. But if we're meek, we won't use them.

We won't lash out at someone to hurt somebody. Maybe we could. We could go ahead and do that. But, brethren, it would not be Christian. It wouldn't be what a Christian would do. You've got a power to do that. But meekness means you've got control over yourself. And God has given us a spirit, brethren, of power and of self-control, as we know it talks about in the New Testament. Let's notice verse 6 here. Verse 6, and we need more of this. Blessed are those who hunger in thirst for righteousness. We want to do the right things.

And what is righteousness? Does the Bible tell us what righteousness is? Well, isn't it God's commandments? God's commandments are righteous. Isn't that what the Bible says? So obeying God's commandments, and the Spirit, and the letter. But it says, for they shall be filled. We live in a world, brethren, where people don't really want to know what the truth is anymore.

Let's go over to Jeremiah 5. Jeremiah 5 over here. Jeremiah 5. And notice this. What Jeremiah says, and it could be a description, of course, of our time that we're living in right now. But in verse 1 through 4, we'll go through those verses, but it says, See now and know, and seek in our open places. If you can find a man, if there's anyone who executes judgment, go out there. Try to find him in the world. Who seeks the truth, who really wants to know the truth. You ever try to tell somebody the truth, and it's like they start yawning?

Sending you a signal? And God says, if you can find somebody, I'll pardon them. I will pardon them. It's like, doesn't that sort of harken back to the time of Abraham, and the angels going into the sign of the Lord? You can find these righteous people. I'll do this for, I'll spare the city, and you have five people in the city that are even looking to God, period. And it's as though they say, they say, as the Lord lives, surely they swear falsely, he says. Oh, they talk about God, they talk about Jesus Christ, how they love the Lord.

You know, they talk about the level of love, but they, again, will not do it. They swear falsely. Oh, Lord, are not your eyes on the truth? You have stricken them, but they have not grieved. You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than a rock. They don't listen anymore. They have refused to return. Therefore, I said, surely these are poor, they are foolish. For they do not know the way of the eternal. They don't know God's way. This is the world we live in, brethren, and increasingly so. Let's go to Zechariah chapter 8. Let's know this over here.

Zechariah chapter 8, in verse 21, he's talking about a time in the future of how things are going to change in the future. When, in fact, we as that leavening can be injected into this world, and it can begin the process of taking over the world.

But it says, the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, let us continue to go and pray before the eternal. Here's the change of mind, a change of heart here. And seek the Lord of hosts. I myself will go also. Yes, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem to pray before the eternal. And thus says the Lord of hosts, verse 23, in those days ten men from every language of the nation shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, let us go with you.

For we have heard that God is with you. We've heard that. What a world that will be different when that happens, when people, rather than running from God and rejecting God, are going to be accepting God, wanting to know what God's word says and wanting to know what the right way was. And, you know, this is what's going to happen. And when they begin to do this, people start getting their minds right. They're going to be more satisfied because they'll be in God's realm, God's way of thinking. Go back in Matthew chapter 5 again, if you've got your thumb back over there, but in Matthew chapter 5, you know, down in verse 7, Jesus went on to say, in these core things, they're going to be what the kingdom of God is going to be about.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the compassionate. This word in the Greek is compassionate. Those that are compassionate for other people are going to receive compassion from God. Later on in the Sermon on the Mount, in chapter 7, Jesus said, judge not lest you be judged. He also said in Matthew 6, 14, forgive that you might be forgiven. Imagine a world where everybody's forgiving everyone. Nobody's lashing out. Everybody's meek. Everybody's humble. Everybody's merciful and kind and gentle. In verse 8, notice this, it says, blessed are the pure in heart. Again, getting back to this thing of truth and not having hypocrisy. Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they shall seek God.

Those who are pure in heart have a singleness of mind, a right way of thinking. God wants us to, brethren, be that way. Someone with mind, pure of motives, wrong motives, don't have wrong motives. You have the right motives. You're seeking pureness inwardly, striving to overcome. The Bible says, blessed are the man unto whom the Lord imputes no iniquity. Not that we don't fall down and make mistakes, but a man who sincerely, brethren, is trying to obey God.

God is more than willing to forgive. If we are men and women who have that heart, brethren, God will be more than willing to forgive us. Only those who are like Jesus Christ, brethren, when He returns are going to see Him as He is.

If we've been striving to be like Christ, and I'm not going to go to 1 John 3, verses 2 and 3, where it talks about that, and where in fact John says, he that has this hope that he's going to see Christ as he is, because we're going to be like Him, and he says, if you have this in you, a man like that, and a woman like that purifies himself.

For that hope that's coming, that tremendous hope. Verse 9, In other words, set in example, brethren, of harmony and unity. Those who strive to prevent contention, strife, and rivalry are going to be those that are like Christ.

Those who incite rivalry, they are not like Christ. Those who incite division, if we practice peace, brethren, we're going to have the chance, brethren, to be called, the Bible says, the sons of God.

We're the children of God, the sons and daughters of our Father in heaven.

All of us need to be good at what we do in our lives. We need to be good neighbors.

An example of what a Christian ought to be, to always live in a desire to have peace with our neighbors, offering to help where we can.

I remember my neighbor one time was away, and I whipped up my lawnmower and I mowed his front lawn. I don't think he knew who did it.

But a number of times I did that for him while he was gone. But one thing was kind of interesting to me. One time I looked out and my lawn was mowed.

I guess he felt like he had to pay me back. But I didn't do it for that reason. I was just trying to help him.

He was a police officer, in fact. But that's the way it works. 11 begins to affect the world.

What we do begins to affect the world. We need to be good examples of peacemakers within the church.

Bringing people together, encouraging people, forgiving people, not spreading rumors, not being people of rumors.

But keeping things to ourselves, you know, if it helps another person. And to pray for that person, that they can come in unity of the faith.

As husbands and wives, we need to get along, not have the petty arguments, and get along and show love toward one another.

I have to tell you this story. There was a man and his wife were having some problems at home, and they were giving each other the silent treatment.

I know nobody's ever done that here. But people do, don't they?

Well, a business trip came up, and the man realized the next day he was going to need to have his wife wake him up at 5 a.m. to make it to the airplane.

And he knew that if he talked to her, he'd be breaking the silence. And so he wrote her a note.

And he put it where she couldn't miss it. That she couldn't miss the note at all.

And the next morning he got up, and it was 9 a.m. And he was angry. He was really, really angry.

And he thought he was going to really chew his wife out because she didn't wake him up.

And he noticed, though, that she had dutifully put a note next to where he could see it that said, It is 5 a.m. Wake up. You know, it's sort of a funny thing, but, you know, isn't that the way people work in this life?

I remember there was an elderly lady who had lost her husband. And she said, You know, sometimes we fought when, you know, he was alive.

And she says, You know, when I regret that, those things, the arguments we used to have and all that.

And she said, You know, what we should have done is just kiss and hug each other. That's what we should have done.

And not argue with each other and to be at peace.

But we need to be of the mentality of being peacemakers.

It goes on here in verse 12. Rejoice, he says in Matthew chapter 5, Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great as a reward in heaven.

But he says also, verse 11, Blessed are those who revile you and persecute you.

So it shows that we are going to be persecuted. We're going to go through all kinds of things. We're going to be accused falsely.

But he said, Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great as your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

So Jesus said, If we're willing to endure these things and have these core values, these beautiful attitudes, that we're going to be, brethren, in the kingdom of God.

You know, Jesus Christ told the Pharisees that the kingdom of God was within them.

You remember the scriptures in the Bible that talk about where the kingdom of God was within them.

But if you look in the Greek, Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God was in the sense of within them, it was among them.

That Jesus Christ was the coming King of kings and Lord of lords, and he was there, and they didn't see him.

They didn't notice him.

Well, brethren, the kingdom of God is among this world right now.

God's people, you and me, who are part of God's very kingdom, become brethren.

In the Mothic translations, in those verses, it says that the reign of God is now in your midst.

It's beginning now.

But, brethren, we're that, again, living, that one day is going to take over the entire world.

It's not going to corrupt the world, but it's going to beautify the world with all of these beautiful attitudes.

So, brethren, are you, in your life, hopefully this is a takeaway here as we, again, move away from the days of 11 bread, are you the leaven of righteousness that's going to do that in the world tomorrow?

You know, the song that says, let there be peace on earth, what does it say?

But let it begin with you. Let it begin with you.

And, brethren, not when Christ returns right now.

Let it begin with you.

Will you allow, brethren, the grace of God to make you the kind of leaven that can be used to the glory of God?

We can symbolize, brethren, leavening, brethren, filling our lives all year round, and also letting it symbolize, brethren, the fact that righteousness and good is going to pervade the entire world, the entire earth.

So, brethren, we are initially looking forward to the time when the beatitude, kind of leavening, the righteous kind of leavening fills the whole world, and this whole world is leavened with righteousness in the future.