Many of you will remember Hood's poem "I remember, I remember, the house where I was born!"  Interesting how many people do remember.  Certainly Hood did, for he goes on to describe it.  "The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn".  He describes the tall fir trees that he believed touched the sky...but with the passing of the years he becomes worldly wise and wrote in sorrow "but now 'tis little joy...to know I'm farther off from heaven than when I was a boy!"

Here is the problem of the corroding years - to grow up in this "Pre-construction - mass production - elevated - fabricated - high-rise age" to know that the tall fir trees do not really touch the sky but to still believe that our prayers reach to heaven!

On this step hang all the rest two steps lead to it, the rest are dependent upon it.  "Blessed are the meek"

As Charles Wesley so rightly expressed it -

"A heart resigned, submissive, meek, my great Redeemer's throne
Where only Christ is heard to speak, where Jesus reigns alone!"

Perhaps some of the people who gathered along the roadside on that first Palm Sunday were disappointed with a king who came riding on a donkey!  They would have much preferred a Messiah Who came upon a war-horse scattering all before Him - but the prophecy was not like that at all.  In actual fact it said

"Behold you King comes to you MEEK...riding on a donkey!" Matthew 21:5.

Jesus Himself said "Learn of Me...for I am MEEK...and lowly of heart!"  Matthew 11.29.

"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He shall lift you up!"  James 4:10.

When Jesus spoke about blessedness of the meek and the fact that they would inherit the earth His disciples must have shook their heads in disbelief.  For they lived in harsh cruel days when the Roman legions marched their streets and enforced their authority with ruthless authority.  The idea of the meek surviving far less inheriting the earth must have seemed remote!

Yet 2000 years on that mighty Roman Empire has crumbled...and even the mighty British Empire on which the sun never set and of which Winston Churchill spoke of lasting a thousand years has all but gone and Hong King has become a recent erosion!  But the Empire founded by the MEEK Galilean HAS survived, and that impeccable source of authority, the Guiness Book of Records, says that His followers, His disciples, form the largest religion in the modern world!

People confuse MEEKNESS with WEAKNESS.  But the Bible describes Moses, that rugged old desert campaigner, as, of all men, most meek!

"Now the man Moses was very meek, above all men who were upon the face of the earth."  Numbers 12:2.
 

Meekness is also a fruit of the Spirit.

"The fruit of the Spirit is...meekness"  Galations 5.23.

A major condition of salvation is trusting faith.

"Receive with meekness the ingrafted word which is able to save your soul."  James 1.21.

Blessed, indeed, are the meek, for they have reached that place where they are ready for the long climb which, like Jacob's ladder, reaches all the way from earth to heaven.